How many news outlet staff actually read their own RSS feeds?

I don’t have a TV. I also don’t have a radio. I get my news the same way any self-respecting geek does, via the intarwebthingy. It used to be that I would pop along to news websites and see what was going on, but then Dave Winer invented RSS and that saved me all the fuss and bother of having to figure out whether a site had been updated or not by conveniently feeding new articles into my aggregator. Wonderful.

Blogs, you see, have been using RSS for almost as long as it and they have been around, because blog software is written by geeks, and geeks do like to save themselves some effort whenever they can. RSS was invented in 1997 when Winer created an XML syndication format for use on his blog. Now no self-respecting blog is without a feed. Yay us.

News outlets, on the other hand, suffer from Chronic 90s Web Buzzword Syndrome, which means that they are still thinking about ‘stickiness’ and ‘eyeballs’. I don’t know about you, but the thought of sticky eyeballs quite makes my stomach churn. However, they have – slowly, painfully, and with no small amount of looking over their shoulder to see if the Big Nasty Sticky Eyeball Eating Monster was creeping up behind them – adopted RSS. Despite the fact that bloggers saw RSS as a no-brainer, the media had to think long and hard before they committed to using a technology which made it easier for people to find out what they had published on their websites and which could, therefore, drive lots of traffic their way.

But they’ve got there. Sort of.

I’m glad that The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC et al are using RSS. I am, at heart, a lazy wossit, and I much prefer my news to come to me, rather than for me to have to go out and find it. However, I am afeared that the media has not quite paid enough attention to RSS, making the consumption of news via my aggregator a painful and unpleasant experience.

Firstly, no one seems to have figured out that when you change a story, the changes show up in some aggregators. I use NetNewsWire, and it’s set to show me the differences between old and new versions of an RSS feed. It’s true to say that sometimes NNW misinterprets what constitutes a change, but it also exposes all the real changes made to news stories.

The BBC seems to have the biggest problem with constantly changing RSS feeds. I brought this up once with a meeting of senior BBC news execs, and they failed to understand why this is a problem. It’s not just that it’s irritating – changing a story even a little bit causes it to be republished which then flags it up as ‘unread’ in my aggregator, even though I have actually read it. It’s also that changing stories after they have been published is unprofessional and damages the news source’s credibility. When I link to a news story, I want it to say the same thing next week as it said when I linked to it.

When I explained this to the BBC’s news execs, they cried in exasperation that they couldn’t possibly be expected to be right all the time, and where do you draw the line between a major update, which gives the story a new URL, and a minor update? Well, that is a good question. Another good question is, why do you even do minor updates? Perhaps better sub-editing, along with not rushing too fast to publish, would help get rid of the need for minor updates, and any major changes to the story are dealt with by a new article? Or perhaps there is an even better way to deal with additional facts coming in, such as saying ‘Update’ in the article, or some other methodology that I haven’t thought of that doesn’t screw with the integrity of the original.

To be fair, not all of the BBC’s RSS output is affected. Out of nearly 40 items from the BBC in my aggregator at the moment, five have changes. That’s only ~13%, which you might thing is negligible, but I think that figure should be zero.

You’ll also find, when you click through to the site, that the first paragraph is different from the excerpt that’s published in the RSS feed. Considering how concise some of these first paragraphs on the site are, it makes you wonder why the BBC are writing separate excerpts at all, and particularly makes me question why those excerpts get edited. Seems like make-work to me.

Here are a few examples from today, picked in sequence from headlines published around the 15:30 mark and including the copy from the website as well. I have replicated the additions (in italics) and the deletions (strikethrough) exactly as they show up in NetNewsWire, so you have to take into account its inherent over-enthusiasm for marking things as changed.

Virus-hit cruise firm apologises

Five hundred UK holidaymakers are sent home after their Hundreds of passengers whose cruise ship was detained because of holidays were ruined by a severe virus.virus outbreak are to be offered refunds.

Virus-hit cruise firm apologises

A travel company has apologised and offered a refund to hundreds of passengers whose cruise holidays were ruined by a virus outbreak.

US crash sparks Afghanistan riot

At least seven people are killed in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Violent disturbances rock Kabul after a deadly traffic accident involving a US convoy crashes, triggering a riot.military convoy.

US crash sparks Afghanistan riot

At least seven people have been killed in the Afghan capital Kabul after a traffic accident involving a US military convoy sparked mass rioting.

Race against time in Java quake

The United Nations warns that the task of bringing taking aid to the survivors of the earthquake in Indonesia is “enormous”.“enormous”, the United Nations warns.

Race against time in Java quake

The task of helping survivors of Saturday’s earthquake on the Indonesian island of Java is “a race against the clock”, the United Nations has warned.

Worse than the BBC is Google News. By it’s very nature, Google News is all about change, but by god that screws with your RSS feeds. Out of about 80 items, 68 had changes. Now, Google News aims to track news stories from multiple sources, so it is inevitable that their items should change frequently, but it makes it completely useless in an RSS aggregator, because every time I refresh, the items that I had read become marked as unread again because Google News have either done something as minor as changed the timestamp from “5 hours ago” to “6 hours ago”, which is not hugely useful, or added a new source, or substantively changed the copy.

This breaks Google News’ RSS feed in terms of usability. There’s just no way I can continue to have Google News in my RSS reader.

Now, what the BBC does get very right is its timestamps. Items published today have the time published as their timestamps, and items published yesterday and before have the date.

Would that The Times could learn that timestamps are important. Instead, RSS items from The Times are timestamped with the time that I refresh my aggregator, not the time that they are published. I have my news feeds grouped in one folder and I read them en masse. News is highly time-sensitive, and I want to read stuff as it comes in, so having an accurate timestamp is essential. The Times, however, hasn’t figured this out yet. Instead, I get a cluster of items grouped around a single timestamp, and when I refresh, I not only get new items, I get repeats of old items with the new ‘timestamp’. This is not helpful.

For example, I learnt that ‘3,000 UK troops are Awol since war began’ both at 11:09 and at 13:58; and that ‘Abbas threatens Hamas with referendum over blueprint’ both on 25th and 26th of May. These items are in the same feed, and appear to be identical, yet they are showing up twice.

The Guardian is pretty good, compared to The Times, Google News, and the BBC, in the way they treat RSS, as I would expect considering they have people like Neil McIntosh and Ben Hammersley to advise. They get timestamping right – the clusters of articles all being published at once is more to do with their editorial time-table than bugs in their RSS feed.

But there is still room for improvement. Whilst they do edit their RSS excerpts, sometimes just as pointlessly as the BBC, they do it a lot less often, so my main criticism would be that they are inconsistent in their excerpt writing habits. Some articles get a sentence, others get two bullet points; and sometimes the excerpt (and headline) is the same as on the site, and sometimes it isn’t. I have to say, I’d prefer a single sentence excerpt and headline which was the same as the site.

A few examples of what I mean.

Ghost ship washes up in Barbados

· 11 petrified corpses found in cabin· Letter left by dying man gives clue

After four months at sea, ghost ship with 11 petrified corpses washes up in Barbados

· Letter left by dying man gives clue to investigators

· Dozens of others thought to have perished en route

Climber left for dead rescued from Everest

A climber who was left for dead on Mount Everest has been found alive.

Climber left for dead rescued from Everest

· Team forced to leave Australian at 8,800 metres

· ‘I imagine you’re surprised to see me,’ he tells rescuer

Cage swaps Malibu for own desert island

Nicolas Cage has bought a 40-acre undeveloped island in the Bahamas for $3m (£1.6m)

Cage swaps Malibu for own desert island

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

Monday May 29, 2006

The Guardian

Wherever you go, people stare at you. Paparazzi take pictures, fans ask for autographs, absolute strangers wonder aloud if they once met you at a party. For the hard-pressed celebrity there’s only one way to get away from it all: hide on your own desert island.

The surprise in all this is that the one newspaper who gets it spot on is The Independent. I really can’t fault their RSS feed at all. Timestamps are reliable, and again reveal their editorial timetable with many articles being published in the small hours and few being published during the day. Their excerpts vary in length, but some of the longer ones are more useful than those of other news outlets. Personally, I like longer excerpts because I would rather skim a two sentences that give me a better feel for whether I want to read the article than have just one short sentence that doesn’t tell me much.

Some examples, again with the copy from the RSS and the copy from the site:

British journalists killed in Iraq

Two British television journalists were killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb today.

British journalists killed in Iraq

PA

Published: 29 May 2006

Two British television journalists were killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb today.

Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

Published: 29 May 2006

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Indonesia Earthquake: As a people, they already had little – now they are left with nothing

In the morning, Salim retrieved the lifeless body of his three-year-old son, Sihman, from the ruins of their brick and bamboo hut. In the afternoon, he buried him, digging the grave himself. As night fell, he searched through the rubble of his former home for scraps of food. “I have lost everything,” he said.

Indonesia Earthquake: As a people, they already had little – now they are left with nothing

By Kathy Marks in Bantul, Indonesia

Published: 29 May 2006

In the morning, Salim retrieved the lifeless body of his three-year-old son, Sihman, from the ruins of their brick and bamboo hut. In the afternoon, he buried him, digging the grave himself. As night fell, he searched through the rubble of his former home for scraps of food. “I “I have lost everything,” he said.

I like the fact that the RSS feed and the website copy are identical. To me, that’s ideal – what I see in RSS is what I get on the site. I also can’t see any evidence of changes, although I will say that this RSS feed is new in my aggregator so maybe this point will clarify itself over time.

Now, all this criticism may seem like pointless nit-picking. Perhaps some it is down to my inner editor screaming for consistency and my inner blogger begging for honesty, but certainly some of this has a direct impact on the usability of RSS feeds for the reading of news.

I want news. I have no problem with the idea of clicking on a link in my aggregator and reading the full article on the news outlet’s website – this is not a plea for full posts (although hell, that’d be great and if Corante can put advertising in their RSS feed, so can anyone, but that’s not the point I want to make).

It’s a plea for journalists and media IT staff to think a little harder about how news is being read these days. RSS is not a fad, and it’s not going to go away. It is going to flourish, with more and more people using it to get their news from many disparate sources. It is in your best interests to ensure that your RSS feeds work, that your editorial policies take into account the effect of new technology on the transparency of your medium, and that you strive at all times for honesty even if that means owning up to your updates (note, ‘update’ does not necessarily mean ‘mistake’).

Google News is revealing your reliance on syndicated content, and RSS is revealing your edits. If you want to remain credible, you must adapt. In an increasingly competitive world, where people choose which news sources to read not just based on content but also on usability and accessibility, can you really afford not to?

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