There are bigger issues out there in the world of education journalism than this one, but it’s been annoying me for a while now that the Washington Post’s RSS page doesn’t consistently identify which stories are opinion-based columns and blog posts (from Valerie Strauss or Jay Mathews) and which are straight news stories.
As you can see from the blurry screengrab above, this means that someone speed-reading with Digg or Feedly has to open the story and find out, or guess from the headline — which sort of defeats the purpose of an RSS feed and conflates opinion and news coverage in a way that I think is problematic. (To be fair, the RSS page has included clear identification of stories in the past.)
There are similar, though less obvious problems, with the Washington Post’s education page. Three options are listed at the top — Valerie Strauss, Jay Mathews, and Grade Point (the higher education blog). There’s no option/tag for news coverage from Emma Brown, Lyndsey Layton, Donna St. George or Michael Alison Chander — you have to scroll down to find it.
About The Washington Post’s Campbell Brown Story…; The Washington Post’s Confusing/Unfair “Answer Sheet” Byline System; Washington Post Does A Correction Right; Four Pinocchios for Jon Stewart on Education Spending.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Russo
Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.
Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/
