"If there is a flaw, it's human. It always is."

Shane Richmond, communities editor at the Telegragh, told us this week the internet is causing newspaper readers to become increasingly fragmented. People no longer want to be pigeon-holed as a particular kind of 'reader', be it Guardian, Telegraph, the Sun, whichever. And this is essentially a good thing. On balance stereotypes are always unhelpful and it tackles the notion of straight forward poltical affiliations. People may hold a range of opinions and ideas; left is not simply left, right not only right.

So the fact reader loyalty is on the wane and people are selecting their material not just by topic but down to the individual article is giving them more choice. You might not buy multiple newspapers but you probably will click on a couple of websites to get your politics at the Times or your reviews at the Independent. And it has also made RSS central to many web users' daily routine.

Really simple syndication, or rich site summary depending on what you read, has taken off in a big way. Microsoft acknowledged its arrival in 2005. In the same year a white paper produced by Yahoo predicted the number of RSS users in the US and UK was 72.8 million. And that was three years ago.

Although I am a relative late-comer to RSS, I am a fan. But one thing concerns me. No matter how many different view points you source on a subject using feeds, you still have particular interests. Whether it's British politics, American sport, or Brazilian film, one advantage of RSS is:

"It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in".

But this could be limitng. Is there a danger that RSS is the virtual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "I can't hear you!" to the stuff you're not interested in? Science is not really my thing, but the advantage of reading a newspaper or using a news homepage is whilst heading for the stuff you would normally go for, you might come across an important story that catches your eye. A recent example for me would be CERNs large hadron collider. This would probably never come through on my RSS because its not covered by the sort of feeds I subsribe to, but it's a pretty significant scientific event. And while I understand RSS feeds are probably rarely used in isolation, Amy Gahran points out the effect they are having on websites as well as newspaper sales:

"Web sites are becoming less important for online content distribution as RSS feeds are enjoying increasingly mainsteam usage."

Although Gahran provides a great discussion about how online entities can market and forward traffic from RSS feeds, my point is that there are things people should know which could be missed using RSS. When Shane Richmond speculated about Web 3.0 as a mass of free floating information tailored especially for your needs I was reminded of everyones' favourite Scientologist, Tom Cruise (no offence to Shane). In sci-fi thriller Minority Report, advertisements are specifically tailored for you. Spyware on Amazon and iTunes already use this kind of technology with "others like you bought..." mechanisms. If this happens with the internet at large, where does this leave exploration and discovery?



RSS is an extremely useful tool and there are some really interesting discussions about its advantages regarding privacy and control. Rob Alderson flips my argument on its head looking at what My Telegraph bloggers are talking about- many of their posts centred on topics that weren't making the news. But I think Anthony Mayfield's point from last week can be used here too: utilise the technology, don't be lead by it. The technology is great, but it presents the very human temptation to be lazy. Keep thinking outside the RSS box.

An "old fart" in a 21-year-old's body?

Reading back over my last few blog posts (probably something you should never do), I realised I'm covering the same ground each week, just in a different disguise. I start off proclaiming that I am wary, cynical and sceptical. Call it what you will, I'm basically reiterating that I'm not very well versed in the art of online. I then take up whatever subject has been the point of discussion that week- UGC, digital storytelling, networked journalism and so on- and I appear to talk myself round to believing that actually they're not so frightening, and I should embrace them. I vow to do so. (I warn you now, I suspect I'm about to do this one last time.)

Fast forward to the following Saturday morning, or whenever, as I sit down to "embrace" the internet and it starts again. I feel wary, cynical and sceptical. And most of all, out of my depth. Just what is going on here? I am a 21-year-old journalism student training in what I am told is one of the most exciting eras of modern journalism. So, as logically follows, this week I decided to blog on something I know about; something I'm comfortable with. The death of the newspaper. With Matthew Yeomans highlighting that after 100 years in print the Christian Science Monitor is becoming an online-only publication, and Twitter investor Marc Andressen suggesting the very same day the New York Times should follow suit, I wanted to look at how this has happened. And to confirm, to myself more than anything, that I had to move on.

But when I fished around a bit, I found a pretty confusing picture. While the latest ABC (circulation) figures for September show all the nationals with the exception of The Sun down on sales compared to this time last year, Gavin O'Reilly pointed out that newspapers are a $19 billion a year industry and global newspaper sales grew last year. While the House of Lords asserted that between 1992 and 2006 the amount of adults reading newspapers dropped by 24%, editor of the Daily Express Peter Hill said "I don't see an end to newspapers, ever." Although he acknowledged that he may be considered an "old fart" John Humphreys added "The idea of a society functioning without newspapers is simply preposterous." Screw the traditional media? Tell that to John Humphreys. Hurrah!

And then I came across this: "My gut feeling is that if I was an ambitous 21-year-old and had two job offers, one from traditional print and one from online content or distribution, my guess is that most people would take the online." Well thank you Head of Yahoo! media group John Gisby. I am an ambitious 21-year-old. And I'm a little ashamed to say that put in that situation I probably wouldn't feel drawn to the latter. Why? I suggest that in an industry that isn't sure whether its embarcing or rejecting online, it can be difficult to decide whether you're in or out.

I'm spending this blog pontificating over whether I can get involved in online journalism, rather than just being involved. Any synonims for "apprehensive" are banned from my posts from now on.