RSS readers reviewed

After talking to beat reporters about how they use RSS to research and report their beats, it seemed appropriate to go a step further and look at some of the technical how.

No, I’m not going to try to explain how a feed is tracked in terms my mother would understand. Instead, let’s look at some different RSS readers and some more recent players in RSS-land.

The Original?

River2

Perhaps one of the first RSS readers came from one of the fathers of RSS: Dave Winer. He wrote it in 1999 and called it News River. This year, he started working on a new version, which would “incorporate all that we had learned about RSS aggregation in the last ten years, and combine it with several technologies that had gotten established since we began,” as described on the River2 website.

Winer’s reader is based on the concept of the “River of News.”

He describes this style of news reading on one of his websites, ReallySimpleSyndication:

Instead of having to hunt for new stories by clicking on the titles of feeds, you just view the page of new stuff and scroll through it. It’s like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. If you miss one, no big deal. You can even make the river flow backward by moving the scollbar up. To me, this more approximates the way I read a print newspaper, actually it’s the way I wish I could read a print newspaper — instead of having to go to the stories, they come to me. This makes it easier for me to use my brain’s powerful scanning mechanism. It’s faster, I can subscribe to more, and my fingers do less work.

Sounds like Twitter to me.

River2 doesn’t have most of the features we see in other feed readers. You can’t River2 makes it easy to share a link on Twitter, see news items in reverse-chronological order, add new feeds and reading lists (more on reading lists in a minute), download podcasts or force a scan of your feeds.

One thing River2 does that most other readers do not is reading lists. To put it in simple terms, subscribing to a reading list (just an OPML file) is like following someone’s list on Twitter. You are not following the individual people on that list, but the list itself, so that any changes the author makes will be reflected in what you see.

This struck me as immediately useful for journalists, especially beat reporting. A reporter covering fashion in Los Angeles could share reading lists with a counterpart in New York City. Instead of sharing individual articles, you share everything that you add to the list.

Another feature that River2 provides is support for RSSCloud. RSSCloud is an addition to RSS that means that if you are subscribed to feeds that are Cloud-enabled (recently, WordPress plugins have been released to do this, and all Wordpress.com RSS feeds are Cloud-enabled) you will receive updates from those feeds in almost real-time. Very few other readers are supporting RSSCloud, and I’ll go into that a little more later.

River2 runs on a local server on your computer or can be set up on Amazon’s EC2 servers.

I wanted to interview Winer about RSS and River2, but he told me he doesn’t do interviews. Instead, I emailed him some questions and he was kind enough to respond in a mini-podcast.

Listen to his comments (about seven minutes).

Tried and True

Google Reader

(Full disclosure: I use Google Reader myself)

Google Reader is a free, Web-based RSS reader.

One of the most powerful aspects of Google Reader is the search capability. Find new sites to follow or search your own archives for an older article.

The service integrates nicely with other Google services, which makes its sharing features especially robust: anyone in your Gmail address book who uses Google Reader can share and comment on articles with you. If you want to share outside of Google, you can also share to most social media sites or create your own public page of shared items.

Reader has also been popular among geeks, resulting in a lot of Firefox extensions and scripts that extend or modify function and appearance.

Away from your computer, Google Reader has been optimized for any Web-enabled phone.

We have a screencast from earlier this year on using RSS and Google Reader.

Bloglines

Bloglines has been around for what seems like forever and was one of the first popular RSS readers.

It may not be as feature-filled as Google Reader, but sometimes simple is better.

Features include:

• Mobile version
• Custom Startpage
• Manage e-mail subscriptions
• Saved searches deliver future articles matching your key words and phrases
• Most popular lists show the days hot topics

Journalists use RSS to track rivals, news, tweets & other info

This post sponsored by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

RSS is an incredibly useful way for journalists to keep track of beats by watching what is being published online, whether on news sites, blogs, Twitter, saved Google search terms, etc.

I spoke to three journalists about how they use RSS for research and reporting. They also each gave one really good tip for diving into RSS.

For those unfamiliar with RSS, Wikipedia has this to say about RSS:

RSS (most commonly expanded as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.

Eric Berger

Eric Berger has been a reporter at the Houston Chronicle for 10 years and has been covering science for the last eight years. He has been blogging about science since 2005, creating a community to discuss science at SciGuy.

“When I first started blogging I found science blogs and used RSS as a means to keep track of the flow of information,” Berger said. “It’s too difficult and time-consuming to visit 100 blogs a day.”

Berger uses Bloglines, a popular RSS feed reader, to follow around 80 Web sites and blogs. He estimates seeing 300 new items a day.

“Back in the dark ages (five -six years ago), if I was working on a story I might be solely focused on that and not seeing what else what happening in science,” Berger said. “Now it’s impossible to escape that.”

He follows scientists of various disciplines, so he can keep track of various scientific communities. He also collects news releases via RSS, which sometimes turn into blog entries.

“If that strikes a chord in the community, then you can spin it into a story for the newspaper,” he said.

One Tip:

“Just experiment with it [RSS] and put new feeds in and don’t be afraid to add or delete feeds. Your feed reader shouldn’t be static, your list of feeds should fluctuate with what you’re working on.”

David Brauer

David Brauer covers media and occasionally politics for MinnPost.com.

Using RSS became a critical part of Brauer’s job in March of 2008, when he started writing a aggregated morning briefing for MinnPost.com.

“You have to make sure to pay attention to local news sources,” Brauer said. “The only way to do it is with RSS. RSS makes it very efficient to know what’s going on in the area I cover.”

Brauer no longer does the morning briefing, but RSS has remained vital in more general work. He is subscribed to 138 feeds in Google Reader, primarily local media feeds such as public radio, tv stations, alt weeklies and of course, the local newspapers.

“It’s one of the tools I use most as a reporter. RSS and Twitter,” he said. “RSS is good for checking things I already know to check; Twitter is good for finding things I wouldn’t have known to follow.”

His feeds are organized with 24 tags, categorizing feeds into sections such as sports, tech, big, little and suburban, public radio, local aggregators, local blogs, local papers, college journalists, national and politics.

“I see over 1,000 new items a day, but experienced users know you can just mark all items as read and move on,” Brauer said. “Be somewhat aware of balance so you don’t spend all day in RSS.”

One Tip:

Brauer suggests that journalists look into the sync features offered by many RSS readers, and to make sure that your RSS reader of choice is available for multiple platforms. (Google Reader has Web and mobile versions that sync.)

Sean Blanda

Sean Blanda is an editor at Vital Business Media and a co-founder of Technically Philly.

Blanda started using RSS around 2005, with Bloglines.

“It was coolest thing in the world that I didn’t have to put up with email and could still get content sent to me,” he said. “When I figured out you could get feeds of Google Alerts (and now Twitter mentions) it really spiraled out of control.”

Most of his ideas for stories at Vital come from media news feeds he gathers. He also runs Technically Philly part time and uses RSS to gather information quickly and get a large cross-section of sources.

“Our readership is very active on social media and blogging, so I have alerts for people’s names, companies, locations in Philadelphia, etc.”

Blanda uses Google Reader instead of Bloglines now, attracted by the social tools Google has been adding recently. Users can follow friends, share stories and comment on content together.

“I can see what my friends think is important too,” he said. “Most of my college newsroom was using Google Reader and it became a better way to stay in touch and shoot story ideas back and forth.”

He keeps 377 subscriptions organized by purpose, so for Vital he has folders by industry and for Technically Philly he sorts by beat and general news.

“I check all of the feeds related to my job everyday, every story,” Blanda said. “The other stuff, I get to it when I can, if not, no big deal. And sometimes I declare bankruptcy and mark all as read.”

Blanda can’t estimate how many news items he gets in a day: “It [Google Reader] always says 1000+ (unread items). I’d say I check around 500-600 a day.”

One Tip

“My one tip would either be to get other people on your beat to share on Google Reader or to not forget Yahoo Pipes as a way to filter info…something I haven’t taken enough advantage of. With enough work you could always be sure to get relevant information.”

Do you use RSS to research and report? How do you organize your feeds and fight information overload? What creative uses do you put RSS to? Can you offer other tips?

Podcast: Real-Time Ads seek to harness immediacy of social media

MinnPost publisher Joel Kramer is aiming to bring the same immediacy and frequency of social media to advertising with a new ad format, dubbed Real-Time Ads.

Kramer noticed that local businesses in Minnesota were using Twitter, blogs and other social networks to get their messages out to people, and Kramer wanted to tap into this market. Real-Time Ads don’t even require additional effort on the part of advertisers either. All an advertisers has to do is submit an RSS feed of content that they are already creating (like a Twitter feed or feed from a blog), and MinnPost will display headlines or brief summaries of these existing messages that link back to the full message on an advertiser’s Web site.

Real-Time Ads look like a cross between traditional classified ads and Twitter updates. And like a Twitter stream, Real Time Ads are listed in chronological order. Advertisers are required to update their messages frequently, and if an advertiser doesn’t update for awhile, their message will be at the bottom.

MinnPost is currently vetting advertisers for this program in order to ensure a high quality experience. A lot of advertisers are interested in Real-Time Ads, but many don’t have an RSS feed of a frequently updated message. If an advertiser isn’t already harnessing the immediacy and frequency of social media and blogs, they probably aren’t a good fit for Real-Time Ads.

“If you’re only creating a message once a week, then this thing is not for you,” Kramer said. “Beyond that, we do want the space to be a value to our readers. So, we might say only certain kinds of products and services could be in there.”

Kramer strives to keep MinnPost’s ads high quality because high quality ads provide a better user experience and bring in more money. MinnPost only displays banner ads to Minnesota residents, guaranteeing advertisers that their ads are reaching the people they want to reach. This targeting of ads is why MinnPost enjoys a robust $15 CPM.

Real-Time Ads enjoy one significant benefit over other, more traditional ads like banner ads: they’re self serve. MinnPost is not involved in the ad creation process, and advertisers sign themselves up and provide their own RSS feeds. All MinnPost does is vet potential advertisers.

This new ad format is meant to be another piece of the puzzle for MinnPost, not a panacea. The site has banner ads, large sponsorships, small sponsorships, a jobs board and now, frequently updated, small ads. Banner ads are designed weeks or months in advance and are for longer-term campaigns.

A Real-Time Ad could be advertising a lunch special for two hours. A restaurant, for example, might notice that business is slow and then update their status with a new special to try to entice dinners to come in. Real-Time Ads are designed for the now.

“For readers, it’s a kind of marketplace of the latest marketing messages,” Kramer said.

The service is currently in beta and free to advertisers testing it out. A final price for the ads hasn’t been settled on, but Kramer said the ads will be less than $100 a week. Kramer said MinnPost is considering charging different rates for different placement. A Real-Time Ad that is placed on all pages would cost more than one that just showed up an ad-only page.

MinnPost is also considering charging different rates based on how often ads are rotated into a particular spot. Kramer also said it’s possible that Real-Time Ads will be targeted. For instance, a local sports store would be able to choose to have their Real-Time Ads only show up on sports content.

“There could be many, many combinations, with different prices on them,” Kramer said about Real-Time Ads.

Kramer views Real-Time Ads as a form of content that enhance a user’s experience, and ideally, MinnPost users would find Real-Time Ads valuable, instead of distracting like most online ads. Kramer is considering having a dedicated page of just Real-Time Ads. A business directory could logically follow as well.

The format is about a week old, and Kramer said more time is needed to gather feedback before making any major judgements. Advertisers seem intrigued by the idea. Only time will tell, however, if users find the new ads valuable.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

How do you use RSS for journalism?

Reporters and editors, we need your help.

Please share your stories on how you use RSS and RSS feed readers (Google Reader, NetNewsWire, Bloglines, etc) for journalism. Has RSS become a valuable reporting tool for you? Does RSS allow you to keep tabs on beats and topics?

If you’d like to learn more about RSS and journalism, check out our screencast on how RSS and Google Reader can be fantastic reporting tool.

Please share your experiences in the comments section after this post or e-mail us at connect [at] patthorntonfiles [dot] com.

Screencast: How to use RSS and Google Reader for journalism

Note: These screencasts can be toggled into fullscreen mode for easier viewing.

This week’s screencast is about using RSS for journalism and reporting.

We use Google Reader to demonstrate how RSS and RSS feed readers can be a powerful journalism tool. RSS feeds and feed readers can allow journalists to easily monitor a lot of disparate news sources. It’s much easier to use a tool like Google Reader to monitor information on the Web than it is to use Web browser bookmarks or to manually typing in URLs.

This video goes over:

• How to add find RSS feeds
• How to add RSS subscriptions to Reader
• How to use Reader’s more advanced features
• The power of searching within Reader
• And much more

Our previous screencasts can be found here.

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