set TitleText to "<title>Author: Title of article</title>"
set A_T to my GetAuthorTitle(TitleText)
set author to item 1 of A_T
set title to item 2 of A_T
display dialog author & return & title -- debug
on GetAuthorTitle(TitleText)
set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"<title>", "</title>", ":"}
set {author, title} to {text item 2 of TitleText, text item 3 of TitleText}
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
return {author, title}
end GetAuthorTitle