Newspapers Finally Getting It?
This news made my day to day and marks a significant milestone for media. If your like me and your information hub is RSS then you’ll know the frustration of partial feeds. Of the newspapers out there that have any kind of web presence their contribution to your feed reader is for the most part poor for the following reasons:
- Content is offered as a partial feed that makes to go to the source
- Stories differ from the “paper” version
- When you go to a newspaper’s website you can’t help feeling short changed and so you don’t bother
Beats me why the press has been slow to catch on and clinging to old media. I have long asked why, with all their resources and long standing strength as a print medium they have not grabbed new methods of publishing with both hands and changed with the times. They seem to want to cling to old traditions and refuse to budge. All to their detriment.
I can understand that they make their online content different to their hard-copy, but not as a full feed? What was with that and what difference does it make when you can advertise in RSS very easily these days.
The Gardian however is becoming a trail blazer and one that has trumped them all. Today they mark the first Newspaper globally to offer full feeds when you subscribe to their RSS feeds. Qudos, but better if I was English.
Bloggers and podcasters have known for ages that full feeds are the way to go. Persoanlly if a feed is partial it will have a short life if any on my feed reader. Most people that rely on RSS feel the same way. With a partial feed you may as well be surfing the web old style.
The only limitations with the Gardian’s feeds are that they don’t always carry the cartoons and graphics. If they doubt their rights to re-publish the story as an RSS feed then they will feed you a summary with a link to the whole story.
Nice work Gardian guru’s and I hope your the first of many. Newspapers are dead if they don’t get with the program and evolve. This move by the Gardian brings hope to the industry that is struggling to maintain readers in a world where people are turning to the web in increasing numbers to get up to date. It also means that the budgie might have to find something else to line his cage with…
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A shame the Grauniad is such a piss poor excuse for a newspaper, but good on them for releasing all of their feed.
I subscribe to a few RSS feeds from newspapers, and apart from partial feeds, other annoyances include publishing the same story 5 or 6 times throughout the day with minor updates (SMH I’m looking at you), and publishing the same story in multiple feeds (UK Telegraph often has “world” and “national” stories in both feeds).
I also wish there was some sort of “recycled content alert” in Google Reader. It’s so annoying to see the same news story reported in exactly the same way from many sources (they’re often reporting the Associated Press or Reuters feeds), and then there are the big Engadget/Tech Crunch/Wired feeds which often carry the same things a few hours/days apart.