It's even worse than it appears.
Monday August 30, 2021; 11:19 AM EDT
- Yesterday I posted an item that about collaboration in the news industry to help disseminate critical information. #
- An idea for the news industry to collaborate on. Sometimes a news org takes down the paywall on a story because it's important that everyone see it. Make an RSS feed that combines all such stories across all pubs. Make spreading the news even more efficient. #
- A simple idea, really -- not much tech, and news orgs are already doing it. The post got a lot of traction on Twitter, and favorable notice from a fair number of people inside news orgs, people who would be critical to making this idea a reality. #
- So what's needed, technically, beyond what's already there? Probably just this -- a way to tell, in an RSS feed, that an item is outside the paywall. #
- How to do that? Create a namespace, anyone can do that. Call it (say) the urgentNews namespace. You could have its url point to this post if you like. #
- To begin with the namespace has one element, isOutsidePaywall. #
- This is what an item might look like for such a news item. #
- <item> #
- <title>Sed do eiusmod tempor</title> #
- <description>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam.</decription> #
- <link>https://anytownnews.com/2021/923883.html #
- <urgentNews:isOutsidePaywall>true</urgentNews:isOutsidePaywall> #
- </item> #