January 24, 2003
RSS II: Leveling the Field
Online Journalism Review columnist J.D. Lasica has an excellent piece about the proliferation of RSS-based news readers. The good news for newspapers, says Lasica, is that "Internet news feeds give news organizations another way to reach that most elusive of creatures: the wired, tech-savvy professional. And you can bet that within a year or so, students will be latching onto RSS subscriptions in a big way."
The bad news for newspapers is summarized by Dave Winer in this quote: "It puts bloggers on the same field as the big news corporations, and that's great."
I posted earlier on a Rusty Coats' column that cited how Big Media is slow to adapt new technology.
Links
J.D. Lasica News That Comes to You
If I see an AP story in an unknown newspaper, I've heard of AP and may choose to trust it despite any ambivilence I might have about the media establishment.
If a newspaper (or blogger) I respect chooses publish synidicated material, to some extent the reputation of the former back the latter.
This is an incremental step at most, one party or the other still has to build a reputation. If I respect the guy creating the RSS feed, I would be willing to visit his blog anyway. If I respect the guy receiving the feed, I would read him and follow his links. I don't feel this is as huge a change in blogging as it sounds at first.
Or maybe I'm jealous, Blogger doesn't seem to support an RSS feed. I'm not ready to pay to blog yet.
Posted by: David Weisman on January 26, 2003 06:09 PM