By Jackie Rejfek — University of Nevada-Reno

Really Simple Syndication, an automation tool that drives traffic to news sites, will continue to change the way people view news, according to panelists at the 2004 ONA Conference in Hollywood on Saturday.

Comments and concerns for how online news sites are using automation were presented at the session "I, Robot: How to leverage automation to your advantage."

Bill Gannon, editorial director and managing editor of Yahoo News, said Yahoo uses RSS feeds from content providers to move more than 10,000 stories everyday. These feeds are hand-picked by a team of editors, a process Gannon described as aggregation with a voice.

In contrast, Google News Product Manager Nathan Stoll explained the technology behind aggregation at Google. The search engine uses algorithms to provide links to news Web sites around the world, Stoll said. For example, Stoll  explained how a user can search and view links on the same topic from both the New York Times and Tehran Times.

Jay Rosen, New York University professor of journalism and writer of the blog Press Think, gave a different perspective on the search engines' respective products.

Rosen said people should approach search engines as filters, and the search engines should be concentrating more on their relationships with readers.

Rosen said he uses Yahoo News because the links are reliable and permanent. He uses Google because a person does not pick the stories and he can see which sites are ranked highest. The rank indicates a story's popularity and the number of people linking to it.

Rosen said newspaper Web sites have generally not been successful at developing automation or RSS into serving readers. Most, he said, are killing their Google presence by letting their links expire. And many news outlets are afraid to uses RSS feeds because the feeds make it difficult to track if someone actually reads the story, Rosen said.