If you don't read newspapers you're...

The geeks reckon they don't need to read newspapers any more. They think they can get everything online, and call paper and books "dead trees". Robert Scoble says he has almost entirely replaced newspaper consumption with RSS feeds. Is this the future? Hmm.

I still read all the papers every morning. As many as I can any way. Most mornings I'm in our press briefings - we look at political agendas of the media owners, the biggest issues of the day, and who's writing what. In the UK the media wields far greater power on a daily basis than RSS feeds do.

I have a few hundred RSS feeds too - but they haven't replaced my media consumption. They've enhanced it. So is this just a UK thing, or is it universally acknowledged that you can't replace media with RSS and still influence the influencers?

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

Why would you read newspapers anymore? I get tomorrow's news tonight.

[Drew B]

I do too. But not everything from the UK media gets pushed to you through their RSS. And a lot of their matierial doesn't get fed into the Google feeds I've built. So you miss stuff if you replace media with RSS.

I'm a PR consultant, so I need to see what the nation sees, and what my clients and their customers see. And there's a real life business value in that in media relations. Blogs do help, but shouldn't replace IMHO.

Robert - I know media is more fragmented your side of the pond - and that everything is online. Here there's a handful of broadsheets and a similar number of magazines that you can read and know a market's media inside out. Their web feeds wouldn't give you the full picture though. So maybe there's a different critical mass.

[Stuart Bruce - Wolfstar]

RSS feeds are totally inadequate as a replacement to dead tree media. RSS feeds are fantastic but for me they perform entirely a different function. I read newspapers/magazines in the bath, on the sofa, in bed and in the garden. Although I read feeds on my PDA and laptop it's not the same experience.

My main use of feeds is to monitor what's going on, they are not enjoyable in the same way that reading The Guardian or Sunday Times is.

[Dennis Howlett]

The fact UK press hasn't gone wholly over to RSS is only a temporary reason not to use RSS. More important is the fact that geeks only represent a sliver of the demographic cake.

RSS has massive use beyond picking up the news. Imagine RSS into a trading floor? It already happens after a fashion with Bloomberg and Reuters.

It's the next gen folk who will decide the fate of dead tree technology. Not the present generation. I see that in the way my son consumes information.

In any event, the argument is superfluous to wider considerations around community and how that works both internally to organisations and externally to the wider world. Once that message sinks in, then it's pretty easy to see that RSS is a slam dunk.

But let's not forget that's we are today, dead tree press is about finding filler for advertising. And we all know that's in crisis for the proprietors who've had it way easy for 50+ years.

Final thing Drew - when are you going to update your old Forbes cover sidebar stuff? Way out of date eh?

[Drew B]

Everything changes, and so will media consumption of course, especially over generations. I wouldn't argue against that.

But when I was a kid I consumed media in a similar way to kids today do, in that I didn't buy papers or magazines and I never watched the news. I used IM, the web and games - just not quite to the same extent. So will kids still grow up to be broadsheet browswers like other grown-ups did, or will dead tree media actually die out?

.... yes the site's going to get an update Dennis - I'll have a tweak I think. Thanks again for stopping by.

[Dennis Howlett]

It's still nice to pick up a paper occasionally for the crossword puzzle or if I'm somewhere wheerrer there's no wifi but it's not the way I consume information.

What I get through RSS/Sky News/Bloomberg does me just fine. As far as I know I've not missed a major story in the last 2 years so go figure for yourself. Do I need EVERY piece of news? Nah.

[Ged]

Drew, I thought that you may find this article by Bob Cringely over at PBS of interest:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060720.html

Cringely points out the deficiences in the internet as it relates to the news agenda.

[Drew B]

Thanks for the link Ged. Nice article.