Home Internet Make an RSS Feed for your Favourite Journalist

Written by Jonathan Walker

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I have a feature on the left column of this site titled "Birmingham News", which is meant to provide links to stories I have written for the Birmingham Post and Mail. It never really worked, because there was no RSS feed for my stories. My attempts to create a feed using Yahoo Pipes were unsuccessful (and Pipes, although incredibly useful when it works, is not always reliable in my experience).

So thank you Google News for coming to the rescue. Their author search feature allows you to create an RSS feed for stories written by any given author, so that I can isolate my own stories at last.

I thought this may be of interest to others, because you can of course do the same with any writer whose articles appear in Google News.

For example, I am a fan of Matthew Parris. He has his own page on the Times Online website, here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/

But there is no RSS feed specifically for his work, provided by the Times. At least, if it exists, it is well hidden and I could not find it.

But you can easily create your own feed from Google News. Here is the URL:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=author%3A%22matthew+parris%22

To generate an RSS feed for any author, go to Google News:

http://news.google.co.uk/

Enter as your search term (taking Matthew Parris as an example):

Author:"Matthew Parris"

You should get a list of articles written by the author you have chosen. And on the left will be some options, including "sorted by date" and "sorted by relevance". I don't know what relevance means in this context, and personally I suggest clicking on "sorted by date" to ensure the feed gives you the latest articles as they go online.

Google News

Then you can either click on the RSS symbol somewhere near the top of your browser (it will be an orange symbol of some kind, and it will look a bit different depending on which browser you use), or simply scroll to the bottom of the page where there is an "RSS" link.

Google News RSS

Click that link, and there you go.

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Comments (3)add
0
Murray Dick, October 31, 2009 +1
Hi Jonathan - a similar approach can also be useful for creating nice neat RSS feeds from sources who don't offer RSS on their own sites.

By searching for the appropriate outlet in the source option in advanced Google News (or Yahoo news), you can subscribe to the search feed.

I had to do this when I was putting together a Yahoo pipe of big news agency copy, for news writing exercises in my classes, and I couldn't find feeds for Press Association and AP.

It's a lot neater and tidier than going down the DIY RSS route I reckon - here's the (very simplistic) pipe.http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/p...39a809658f
http://slewfootsnoop.wordpress.com
0
Will Peach, November 01, 2009 +0
A great tip there! Thanks Jonathan! Question is: who's worth isolating in the journalism world?
http://www.d2point0.wordpress.com
Jonathan Walker
Jonathan Walker, November 03, 2009 +0
Thanks for sharing that Murray.

Will, I can't really answer your question - whoever you enjoy reading I guess! For me it would tend to be people who write about politics. I hope you're enjoying life in Vietnam, you certainly seem to be busy.
http://www.walkerjon.com
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busy

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