New Media Workshop

Describe the different ways in which each of the four news organizations linked above do or do or do not use feeds.

The four news organisations I checked are NYT, BBC, Standard and SCMP. They all provide news feeds except SCMP.

In short, the BBC site provides the most detailed categorised Feeds, followed by NYT. For Standard, the Feeds come without any cateogirising process which is a bit inconveniecne. And for SCMP, except for PodCast users, Feeds are simply not provided

Compare the difference between reading news in a newsreader and reading it on the news organization’s website through your browser.

Reading news in a newsreader is quite new and unfamiliar, obviously. While we do know  easily, by the setting of the front page, what is the most important news of the day in the past when we read on the news organisation’s website, we tend to be confused a bit as they are not done in the same way in a reader.

Moreover, without the aid of pictures and graphs, etc., the topic itself has to be attractive enough to catch our attentions, which is a difficult task as it is tiring to read through all updates from a dozen of news organisation everyday.

The good thing of Feeds are obvious, just like what described in Feed 101, “regular updates to web-based content, but also keep track of a large number of your favorite Web sites or blogs, without having to remember to check each site manually or clutter your email Inbox.”

And yet, there are still some improvements that could be made in the near future, like what J.D Lasica commented on Surf’s Down as More Netizens Turn to RSS for Browsing, which are relevant graphics and images in the feeds and a better interface between my RSS reader and Weblog software so comments could be made on the news faster and easier.

Based on your understanding of the readings above, how do you think feeds will change the way you get information on the web? As a journalist, how might feeds change the way that news organizations (or solo freelancers) report and present the news?

I think this news reader feature is more likely to act as a tool to file up news from different organisations. Say for example, as individual journalist or a freelancer, when he or she is writing for a certain topic, it will be far more convenience for him to search in his news reader, instead of using the conventional way. it saves time on one hand, and it gives him a more general and representative picture to the issue. As a result, it is quite possible that news written by different journalists will tend to be less ‘isolated’, for it is most likely that they will have to react to other’s news reporting and analysis.

Nevertheless, I do not think that news feed will be popular among general public. Usually, they tend to read a newspaper or two, at most daily, to get a general picture of what is currently happening. The reason is that, for them, it is not that necessary to look into a matter with all available perspectives.