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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?

	Overall Score	Reliability	Inclusiveness	Key Info	Timeliness
5. CNN	2.25

THE HEADLINES: Three RSS feeds were searched through the Yahoo! Pipes software: World News, Top Stories and Latest News. On average, the three RSS feeds returned about 50 percent of “today’s” stories that came up on CNN’s website, but on a day when a secondary news story was searched for (the search term was “Sudan” – the news was possible UN sanctions again Sudan and President Bush’s related speech at the Holocaust Museum) the feeds didn’t return any stories. Overall, the RSS feeds were reliable only about half the time – the results they returned did not consistently match those found on the website.
Other Issues:
	The three RSS feeds for CNN never returned stories that weren’t staff written, but many of the stories that came up on the website search were from outlets such as Reuters or AP.
	The website consistently brought up archived stories that went back more than a month – none of which came through the feeds. Occasionally, the website also pulled pertinent videos and multimedia (some of which were archived), none of which came through the feeds.
	The RSS feeds were timely in their delivery of stories, returning many stories that were posted less than an hour before the search was run.
	Search results for the RSS feeds gave the articles’ headlines/summaries, but other information was only available after clicking through to the full articles. An overview of date, time, author and summary would have been more useful and informative. The website searches returned the stories’ headlines/summaries and the date.
	The RSS feeds were consistent in what they pulled from the website. When 10-12 consecutive searches were run through the feeds, the results remained the same.
	The website search engine had its own errors. It would on occasion return stories in which the keyword did not appear. Those stories did not come through the feeds.
(Mark Leff and Lisa Rassenti)

About CNN

Circulation/Audience

7pm. Wed March 14: Wolf Blitzer: 197

Online Access

No log-in needed.

Parent Company

The Times Warner Company

Other Relevant Ownership and Interests

-AOL
-Time Inc.
-Turner Broadcasting
-HBO
-New Line Cinema
-Warner Bros

Parent Company Revenue

$44 Billion for 2006

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