Want to be the first to get ESPN.com's headlines as soon as they are published? Want to find a way to save time if you read many websites? This FAQ will show you how and will answer some of the common questions about ESPN.com's news feeds.
A news feed (also known as an RSS feed) is a listing of a website's content. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds, which means they download lists of stories at an interval that you specify (every 30 minutes, for example), and present them to you in your news reader. A news feed might contain a list of story headlines, a list of excerpts from the stories, or a list containing each story from the website (ESPN.com's news feeds contain story excerpts). All news feeds will have a link back to the website, so if you see a headline / excerpt / story you like, you can click on the link for that piece of content and will be taken to the website to read it.
How do I subscribe to ESPN.com's news feeds?
Step one is to download your favorite news reader. If you have never used one before, try installing one of the news readers mentioned below and see which one you like.
Point your news reader to the addresses below for each feed you want to subscribe to.
Top Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/news
NFL Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/nfl/news
NBA Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/nba/news
MLB Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/mlb/news
NHL Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/nhl/news
Motorsports Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/rpm/news
Soccer Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/soccer/news
College Basketball Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/ncb/news
College Football Headlines: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/ncf/news
Poker News: https://www.espn.com/espn/rss/poker/master
A news reader (also known as a news aggregator) is simply a piece of software that you can use to read your subscribed news feeds. It is to news feeds what Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail and ProtonMail are to email.
The short answer: it depends.
The longer answer: if you visit a lot of websites on daily basis or read a lot of blogs, a news reader can save you a lot of time. Sites like ABCNews.com, Salon, and the New York Times all have syndicated feeds.
Using a news reader to consume your web media means that you only need to visit a website when you read a story in your news reader that is of interest to you. You won't have to visit many sites multiple times every day to see if there are updates; your news reader will do that for you and will let you know when there is a new story to be read!
So, if you visit a lot of websites regularly, or want to be alerted automatically when your websites publishe a new story, using a news reader might make sense.
Some commonly used news readers are Feedly, Newsblur, Inoreader and Feedbin which offer apps for iOS/Android and web-based readers.
Depending on whom you ask, the acronym RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", "Rich Site Summary", or any of a handful of others.
The meaning of the acronym is not terribly important, however. An RSS feed (also known as a news feed) is a site's syndicated news feed that you subscribe to using your news reader.
Syndication refers to the process that occurs when a publisher provides content in a form that can be consumed by software (like a news reader).
With a syndicated ESPN.com feed, it works like this: ESPN.com (the publisher) publishes a story. Your favorite news reader (the software) sees that ESPN.com has published a new story, and probably alerts you with a flashing icon on your screen.
ESPN makes its news headlines available through RSS feeds to facilitate reading our stories via news aggregators. If you choose to display an ESPN RSS feed on a website or app, you are only permitted to display the content that is provided in the feed, you must link to the full article on espn.com using the URLs provided in the feed, and you must indicate that the content has been provided by ESPN. You may not incorporate advertising into any ESPN RSS content. You may not modify any content provided in the feed, including but not limited to story headlines, story summaries, or URLs.