|
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? |
|
|
Excellent |
|
Very Good |
|
Acceptable |
|
Not Acceptable |
|
|
 |
Overall Score |
Reliability |
Inclusiveness |
Key Info |
Timeliness |
| 4. Financial Times |
2.5 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
THE HEADLINES: Five RSS feeds were searched through the Yahoo! Pipes software: World, Comment, Mideast Africa, Europe, and Indepth Iraq. On average, searches conducted using the three RSS feeds returned about three-quarters of “today’s” stories that came up on searches on the Financial Times’ website. Searches conducted through the news feeds more reliably returned results similar to the website when secondary news stories (i.e. “Sudan”) were searched for—in part, because fewer stories were found on the actual news site. Searches on the RSS feeds for the larger stories (i.e. “Iraq”) were less reliable in terms of results. |
| Other Issues: |
 |
There were no stories that appeared to be from other news outlets on either the RSS feeds or on the website searches. They were all from Financial Times online staff or taken directly from the FT print staff writers. |
|
The website search consistently brought up archived stories that went back about a week or more. This was more true for searches for “Iraq” than searches for “Sudan.” |
|
The website search sorted the stories by relevance or by date. The “date” search returned more stories that had less to do with the topic, however the “relevance” search turned up few current stories and more archived stories. |
|
The FT website provided a wealth of information (date, summary, author and place story reported from) for the stories returned through its searches. Search results for the RSS feeds showed the articles’ headlines/summaries, but other information was only available after clicking through to the full article. An overview of date, time, author and summary would have been more useful and informative. |
|
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. |
|
Neither the website nor the RSS feeds search provided any multimedia results. |
(Chelsea Jones and Carrie Peirce) |
|
|
|
