Apple acquisition will let it distribute digital versions of magazines including the Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Vanity Fair

Apple is buying Texture, a digital magazine subscription app from prominent publishers — a sign that the company is deepening its interest in becoming a major distributor of news.

Texture — formerly known as Next Issue Media — aims to be a virtual newsstand that gives readers access to roughly 200 magazines, including the Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Martha Stewart Living, and Vanity Fair, for $9.99 a month.

The infusion of cash, technology and, most importantly, a powerful potential distribution channel for Texture’s content could help put it in the hands of many more readers.

For Apple, the purchase of Texture is also an opportunity to highlight the company’s role as a trusted news distributor at a time when the American public is worried about the credibility of information from technology giants.

Apple’s approach to pressing questions of news reliability and the role of human curation differs from rivals Google, Facebook and Amazon. While Facebook and YouTube rely almost exclusively on software tools to decide what news people will see — Facebook fired its news curators in 2016 — Apple has a human editorial team for Apple News, the company’s news aggregator app that comes pre-installed in smartphones. Human editorial teams also work for the company’s podcasts app and Apple Music.

In a statement on the company’s website, Apple emphasized its focus on trustworthy news sources — a subtle dig at Silicon Valley rivals that have helped to spread false news and disinformation.

With high-profile industry backers and a collection of the nation’s most popular titles, the Texture app was an attempt to help the struggling magazine business gain footing in the smartphone era. The joint effort from rival publishers, which began in 2009, shortly after Apple’s launch of the app store, reflected a desire to save print media from massive readership declines and move the industry toward new habits of media consumption. The company was based in Silicon Valley and largely backed by publishers in New York.