Comments on: Why are newspapers hiding their niche content?

By: Newspapers: keep your RSS feeds « doctorvee

Newspapers: keep your RSS feeds « doctorvee — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:58:43 +0000

[...] Never heard of the long tail? Having few subscribers to an RSS feed isn’t a weakness. In fact, it plays to the strengths of RSS feeds as the ideal way to disseminate niche content. For me, the problem with newspapers’ approaches to RSS feeds is the complete opposite. As I have written before, they don’t offer enough RSS feeds. [...]

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:18:09 +0000

Caspar — Yup, I’m a big fan of Currybet’s blog. Needless to say, if anyone wants a good overview of newspaper website designs, where they go wrong and how they can be improved, Currybet is the place to look.

By: Caspar

Caspar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:14:18 +0000

http://www.currybet.net/ has been running a series of articles looking at national newspaper sites, this has included their RSS offerings and comparing what they offer, how its publicised etc, well worth checking out. Hopefully some of them will take action when they see they’ve been put to shame by some of the cheaper tabloids!

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:56:46 +0000

Entirely agreed. I think what’s especially telling is that a lot of papers don’t realise how, while the number of people using these niche feeds will likely be very small – and so not worth bothering with – they’re also highly likely to be people who will spread the content they find far and wide. It represents a failure to understand how the link economy works. Several sites you mention have had redesigns pretty recently, so it’s not like they should be behind the times on the technology.

(I’m hoping that my own employers will be doing something along these lines in the not-too-distant future, touch wood.)

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:34:16 +0000

Yeah, I wasn’t happy with the word niche, but I am struggling to think of another way to describe it. There must be loads of people out there who are interested reading about certain subjects and not others — and the majority of media websites are totally shunning them.

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:25:55 +0000

I have a Times football feed in my RSS reader so I must have got it from somewhere. Not sure where though as I’m having difficulty finding it on the site.

But yes, I agree on this. RSS is not difficult to set up. It’s really not rocket science to get those niche feeds (and I wouldn’t even call F1 niche) that can attract a decent amount of traffic set up.