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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
3. Fox News	2.75

THE HEADLINES: Three RSS feeds were searched through the Yahoo! Pipes software: World News, National News and Latest Headlines. On average, the three RSS feeds returned about 50 percent of “today’s” stories that were found on FOX's website search. The stories that did not show up on the RSS were articles from AP that had a copyright notice at the bottom saying that the article could not be rebroadcast or redistributed. The stories that did show up on the RSS did not contain this notice. Overall, the RSS feeds were reliable about half the time – the results they returned did not consistently match those found on the website.
Other Issues:
	Most stories that were returned from searches both on the website and the RSS feeds were from an AP writer or wire. Some AP stories came through feeds but only those that did not had a copyright notice saying that the article could not be redistributed or rebroadcast. (Oddly, other AP stories posted on other news outlets that did have the copyright notice at the bottom did come through feeds from those other outlets.) Throughout the entire study there were only a handful of articles that came through the searches that actually had a "Fox News" byline.
	The Fox website and the Fox RSS feeds differed in how they responded to keyword searches. Through the Pipes, searching for Iraq brought up “Iraq” as well as “Iraqi” while on the website searching for Iraq only brought up Iraq. This helped to create a difference between the results on the feeds and the website. All but two of the stories that came up on the website and RSS were from AP wires and writers.
	The Fox website consistently brought up archived stories that went back more than a month – none of which came through the feeds.
	Occasionally, the website search returned videos and multimedia results (some of which were archived), none of which came through the feeds.
	The RSS feeds were relatively timely in their delivery of stories. Most stories returned were from the same or previous day.
	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 Fox website search returned the date and summary of the articles – there was no way to see what time the article was posted on the web site. The byline of the story could only be found after clicking through to the article.
	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.
(Hadass Kogan and Mike Wish)

About Fox News

Circulation/Audience

7pm Wed March 14: Shep Smith - 272

Online Access

No log-in needed.

Parent Company

News Corporation http://www.newscorp.com/index2.html

Other Relevant Ownership and Interests

-New York Post http://www.nypost.com/
-Many other newspapers around the world: http://www.newscorp.com/operations/newspapers.html
-Entertainment studios: http://www.newscorp.com/operations/index.html
-National Geographic Channel http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/
-SKY TV http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/home
-Magazines: http://www.newscorp.com/operations/magazines.html

Parent Company Revenue

$25.327 billion for year ending June 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