Susan Mernit interviewed me back in early February about RSS, for an article published in the Digital Edge. A publication of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), The Digital Edge is for the New Media Federation, a group of folks from the newspaper biz focused on their digital businesses. (Sidenote: how much longer will we persist in separating information by its delivery method?) Anyway “RSS Providers Analyze Newspapers’ Opportunities” includes some of my words, which Susan was kind enough to include with the links intact — an ancillary benefit of an e-mail interview. You can read the article at the link just above, but I appreciated the line “One possible blueprint for online news’ future usage of RSS is visible at CNET News.com, a property of CNET Networks.” Of course, possibilities are a dime a dozen in this space right about now.
Two notes for those who actually care about details in this space. First, I traded emails with Susan for this article prior to the preview release of Newsburst making the rounds, so that part of the “possible blueprint” wasn’t mentioned. Second, with the exception of the CNET Mobile Feed Reader (BREW application), the RSS work across CNET Networks (many different smart people) has been done internally to date, contrary to the impression created by the article.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the brief companion interview with Simon Waldman.
My overall feeling – as I’ve banged on about repeatedly, is that we are seeing the start of a series of moves that will take us from a world of online publishing that is really printing without paper, to a media environment unlike any other we have previously operated in. And, exactly who will make money out of it, how they’ll make it, and how much they’ll make is still unclear.
Amen.