All those with black screens that don't work - just leave out the last bit of the tutorial to do with using a DateConverter. There seems to be some problem here which stops it all working. So your XAML for the final StackPanel element should just be: <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=PubDate}" FontSize="16" Margin="15,0,0,0"/> instead of <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=PubDate, Converter={StaticResource DateConverter}}" FontSize="16" Margin="15,0,0,0"/>