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"Really Simple Syndication” isn’t that simple...

If you think RSS feeds are giving you the same stories that you can find on a news site, think again.

International News and Problems with the News Media’s RSS Feeds

Main Results

Study Conclusions

Understanding Results

What is RSS?

Study Methodology

Authors

Reliability: Do RSS search results match website's search results?

Inclusiveness: Does RSS offer non-staff & archived stories (if also come through website search)?

Key info: Does RSS give headline/summary, date, time, reporter?

Timeliness: Are RSS stories as timely as those from website search?

RSS can bring users lots of content and in many circumstances (blog posts, stock results, movie reviews) its utility is proven and growing. But does RSS work for news? It seems like it should. News is essentially breaking information turned into a product to be consumed.

This study showed, however, that the RSS feeds provided by most news outlets work very poorly for anyone who uses news as more than an entertainment medium or for more than an alert when a major something – anything – has just happened. (Results are continued in Study Conclusions)

	Overall Score	Reliability	Inclusiveness	Key Info	Timeliness
1. Los Angeles Times	3.25
2. Christian Science Monitor (I)	3
3. ABC News	2.75
3. BBC World Service (I)	2.75
3. Fox News	2.75
3. ITN (I, III)	2.75
3. USA Today	2.75
3. Washington Post	2.75
4. CBS News	2.5
4. Financial Times (I)	2.5
4. NBC/MSNBC	2.5
5. CNN	2.25
5. Daily Telegraph (I)	2.25
5. Int'l Herald Tribune	2.25
6. New York Times	2
6. The Guardian (I)	2
6. TIME (I)	2
7. Al Jazeera English (II)	1.75
7. Newsweek (I, IV)	1.75
I. Inclusiveness: no non-staff-written stories on the website search. II. Inclusiveness: difficult to determine if non-staff-written stories were included. III. Inclusiveness: very few to no stories to code for some searches, resulted in artificially high rating. IV. Timeliness: difficult to determine because of confusion in the way the search results were returned.

Click on each media outlet above for further details.

A center of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the School of Public Policy. Copyright © 2006 International Center for Media and the Public Agenda. 1117 Journalism Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742