Why don’t more journalists use newsreaders?
Stephen Warley January 22nd, 2007
I’ve done quite a few web trainings for broadcast journalists over the last year and I am still astonished by how few of them use a newsreader (news aggregator) or even know what one is! I like to think of them as a personalized wire service. Reporters and producers can widen their perspective beyond the AP, Reuters, and their local newspapers by taping into alternative publications, niche websites, and yes, blogs. Newsreaders help you scan more content tailored to your needs more quickly than visiting individual websites. My newsreader enables me to scan about 50 websites a day by visiting just one site. If I were a news director, I would practically mandate everyone in the newsroom set one up. Heck, they’re free. So why don’t you use one?
13 Comments Add your own
1. Chris Rooney | January 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Because it’s addictive!
I’m constantly checking mine.
2. saundra | January 22nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I think most ND’s don’t understand the technology any more than those clueless newsroom employees you are encountering, so of course there’s no mandate. Also, aren’t the station IT people picky about what employees put on their work pc’s? Would you need to adopt some content guidelines or a single aggregator?
3. Stephen Warley | January 22nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Most news readers are web-based, so there sholdn’t be any IT issue.
When we do go into a newsroom, we do recommend choosing a common news reader like Google or Newsgator, but everyone sets up an individual account.
4. Rachel Cunliffe | January 22nd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I was thinking this exact same thought recently after talking with a number of journalists who say they drop and keep an eye on about 50 different NZ sites each day. I was amazed that they didn’t use a feedreader to keep track of them. When I suggested it they weren’t too sure about how to go about it. Afterwards, I remarked to my husband that I was surprised it wasn’t a compulsory 1/2 day course on how to use/set up feedreaders for every single journalist.
5. Safran | January 22nd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Rachel: Time to start Lost Remote: New Zealand!
6. Tim | January 22nd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I started using one, then stopped. I may pick up a different one; but one issue I had was that news feeds all looked the same in the readers I tried (which I admit weren’t that many). Somehow that affected how I treated the information from each site. I don’t know why but it “felt better” to pull each site up individually.
Maybe I’d do better with some kind of “notifier” application which kept track of when sites are updated, and just sent links to the site.
7. Cyril | January 23rd, 2007 at 6:58 am
I used to work with NetNewsWire, an external RSS reader but find it much better to work with Google Reader. I can access it from any computer connected to the internet, create folders for specific topics, quickly browse and aggregate new content, and select relevant articles to read later. My real worry about using an RSS reader is about getting lost in all the information or wasting time reading all the information. However I agree that it definitely makes it easier than ever to catch news.
8. Stephen Warley | January 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 am
One point I always like to make Tim and Cyril is that news readers are very similar to wires . . . . even with wires there is a lot of information you have to wade through that isn’t relevant to your needs.
9. Jason | January 23rd, 2007 at 8:00 am
I prefer the live bookmark feature of Firefox… but I’m experimenting with Newsgator, and we’ll see how that works.
10. Aaron | January 23rd, 2007 at 10:00 am
After watching me scan a dozen or so local sites and blogs in 2 minutes during our afternoon meeting each day, one of our reporters finally asked me “how do you do that?”
I helped him get up to speed with Google Reader.
It’s all about the baby steps. One person starts it, and the others will follow.
11. Stephen Warley | January 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Aaron, nice work! Keep spreading the revolution!
12. Chip Mahaney | January 23rd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
It’s difficult to get standalone apps on corporate PCs, but the new webapps are great. Yahoo and Google have already been mentioned. I’m playing with NetVibes (netvibes.com), which gives me all my RSS feeds on a great-looking customizable homepage.
But I use RSS more on my Treo smartphone, via an app called FreeNews (freerangeinc.com). I’ve got more than 120 feeds on my Treo. FreeNews allows me to catch up on my favorite news and blog sites (including lostremote.com) no matter where I am.
13. Robb Montgomery | January 30th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I am subscribed to over 500 RSS feeds and I rely on my newsreader’s filtering ability. Also I can group feeds together by sources. And in NetNewswire I can tag posts in my del.icio.us feed or include a reference to an item in my blog with a click.
Subscribing is the first step but there is lot more power to RSS than merely subscribing to them to read.
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