Follow multiple Web sites and blogs using RSS
Most Web sites hip to the online world have and promote RSS feeds. Here's how to use those to your advantage as a reporter or editor.
Via Wikipedia:
RSS 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.Collect and read RSS feeds using an RSS aggregator. My favorite, and one of the largest, RSS readers is Google Reader.
Via Cnet's "Newbies Guide to Google Reader":Google Reader
is a free, Web-based reader for RSS feeds. You can find feeds on nearly
every Web site. RSS feeds offer a simplified view of Web content down
to just text, pictures and videos--minus the site's style and
formatting, which can sometimes hinder or befuddle casual reading.
What to do:- Go to google.com/reader and sign up for an account.
- Start adding RSS feeds to your Google Reader.
- Follow dozens, or if you're me - hundreds, of blogs and sites in Google Reader daily. This will cut your web browsing time a bunch!
- You can "star" favorite blog posts --- that you want to come back to later or that you might want to link to from your upcoming stories. You can "share" blog posts also --- sharing them with friends in Google Reader. If you sign up and want to share with me, just add me as a contact in your Google (I am: sonyanews @ gmail.com).
- Share this concept around your newsroom and watch productivity increase (making you a favorite of your colleagues, and bosses).