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Really simple doesn’t mean really popular

I had pleasure of speaking to a group of bright young journalists in Nashville this week. All former interns of the Freedom Forum’s diversity program, they were reporters, photographers and editors from newspapers of all sizes from all over the country. 

It always amazes me that the younger generation, the one thought of as the MySpace or YouTube generation, isn’t incredibly technically savvy. I asked the 20 young journalists how many use RSS feeds on a daily basis and zero hands went up. Weekly? Two hands. Monthly? A few more. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.)

A majority of these young journalists, who I called “merchants of information” by trade, do not use RSS feeds. If this is not alarming to you, then you probably don’t use them either. And that is too bad. Because if you are interested in any kind of information (and isn’t everyone interested in something?), then you are wasting time and seriously hindering your ability to be informed if you do not have the RSS habit.

A reporter with a beat to cover should check their RSS feeds as often as they check email. Maybe more often. By taking the time to set up feeds of Google News alerts into your RSS reader, you can effectively run dozens of searches in seconds.  It takes the same time to visit 100 web sites and blogs in your Google reader or Netvibes page as it does to visit one web site.

Who wouldn’t want to save time and become more efficient?

Please – set up some RSS feeds today. Do one web site, one blog and one Google news search. Then add a couple each day and in no time at all you’ll be covering your beat (or area of interest) without breaking a sweat (or taking all day).

For information on how to set up a feed, check out the first chapter of my book. 

Posted by MarkBriggs on Wednesday, August 15, 2007
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