I’ve been using RSS feeds for years with Feedly. On my iPhone I link up either Reeder or Unread (both are awesome) though – I don’t use the Feedly software.
While I appreciate the advantages of RSS (usually a cleaner reading experience and a single source to read news), there are some major disadvantages that I’m having a harder time overlooking.
First, I subscribe to the NY Times. A lot of their articles contain multiple photos and are rich in video, sound etc. Within the RSS feed an image might squeak through, but comparing an article in my RSS reading app vs the actual online article, there is often quite a bit missing. I understand this is not uncommon as RSS strips out a lot from the article. Okay.
The other issue is volume. Feeds like the NY Times publish hundreds of articles a day, so there’s this need to “stay caught up” at all times. I never actually read all the headlines, it’s more a skip through the list and see if anything catches my eye. This isn’t super productive.
Finally, there’s no way I’m aware of to raise the most important articles to the top. I realize this is somewhat subjective, but on a day where Russia invades the Ukraine, I shouldn’t see a bunch of fluff pieces at the top of my list. As a matter of fact, when I woke up this morning I didn’t notice any news stories on the NY Times or on any other news source I use (Globe and Mail/CBC in Canada where I live). It wasn’t until a friend texted me to let me know before I even knew what was going on. Good thing I have 250 RSS articles to read in the morning to keep me caught up on world affairs.
I know there are different feeds (e.g. Top Stories, Sports) on a lot of sites, but I find these often limit what I see too much, and don’t surface stories that I would otherwise miss.
I appreciate the less cluttered RSS reading environment, but I’m switching over to Google News/Flipboard for the time being so I can see the “bigger” stories more prominently.
It’s 2022 and I still can’t find a one stop shop for reliable news. It’s either the overwhelming firehose of stripped articles in RSS, or the “hey look at me! look at me!” articles littered with ads in apps or sites.