Dump Your Wall Street Journal, Get a Feed Reader

Do you still read the newspaper everyday? Maybe the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal? Good for you for trying to keep up with the news and learning about the world.

Now stop.

Not that I have anything against the people writing newspapers, but they’re obsolete, and this economy is proving that. Several big newspapers have already closed their doors and most are trying to find ways to cut their budgets so they can stay alive. That sounds like an industry about to die. Not journalism, but newspapers.

So how can I get my news without the newspaper? Well, you could go to the countless online websites that have been set-up by said newspapers and pay a yearly subscription to find everything online, but then you’re paying for something that you could get for free, and honestly who wants to do that? But then you run into another problem, in order to get all the same information you find in a newspaper, you have to visit hundreds of websites a week, which is simply too time consuming for most people. It certainly is for me.

So what then? My answer is using a feed reader. Essentially, what a feed reader does is read websites and bring you updates, much like Microsoft Outlook brings you emails. Most feed readers update immediately, so if you have a feed that you’re very interested on cnn.com, it’ll update whenever they get breaking news and you’ll see it without ever having to leave your feed reader. Why is this better than a newspaper? Because it’s free and it brings you the same exact information. If you want more information on how to do this, here’s a video that’ll explain everything to you in under 4 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

But I don’t simply stop with getting the same news. I want better news, more customized news. Newspapers want to tell you what they think is important, because at one time a long time ago, no one else was able to without their own newspaper. But in the world of web 2.0, there are thousands of people trying to tell you something that’s important, and some of them will be more interesting to you. So subscribe to their feeds instead.

How do you find these feeds in the first place? Start with aggregation sites. These are websites that bring in a lot of varied sources information on a particular topic and are easy to find on a Google search. For me, I wanted to know a lot about social media and after some research, I found mashable.com, which focuses on anything and everything social media. After subscribing to their feed, I read a few articles from some social media marketing experts and liked what they said, so I now subscribe to their feeds. I get a lot of sources of great information, much more than a traditional newspaper ever would have done for me.

If you want to find an easy feed reader to use, I suggest google reader, which you can start using by signing up for a gmail account. If you want a desktop feed reader, here’s a list for your choosing: http://www.stephanmiller.com/7-very-cool-free-desktop-feed-readers/

Fast, free and easy… what more do you need?