I’ve tried a variety of news apps. I certainly have enjoyed many of them. Flipboard was one of my favorites for a long time, but began to get too many ads, and do too much curation, when I just wanted my most recent stories. Apple News hid key stories behind paywalls, and didn’t work well with others. From Google to Microsoft, even Twitter, I tried so many different news services. In the end, I went back to an old favorite: RSS.
From long ago, way back to the beginning of my blogging, I kept lists of RSS feeds in apps. I’d organize them by category and interest, and I’d follow all of my favorite blogs and news websites. I never did like getting my news from companies who profit more by showing me ads between the stories, or by elevating certain publications over others. That’s why RSS is so perfect for me. I’m the curator. And, while I’m not always kind to myself, I’m certainly honest with myself. The news I curate is trustworthy and to the point. It’s also not hidden behind paywalls I can’t access, only those I can.
It might sound like a complicated task, but it really isn’t. Many, if not most, of the stories you read online come from publishing platforms that still support RSS. This very blog does too. I even decided to replace the “Follow on Twitter” button at the top of the page with an RSS link to give people a better way to read news than Twitter.
But how do you get started? Well, I can tell you what works for me, what doesn’t always work, and how you can improve your news literacy today with just a few clicks.
Step One: Get the News
RSS feeds are basically just URLs that point to a specific file. This file updates with each post on a website to include information about the post and a link to the story. By collecting a bunch of these feeds together, you can quickly skim the headlines of a large number of stories from a variety of publishers. It has no analog counterpart. It would be like having someone go through the newspaper, clip out every story in chronological order, and tape the headlines back up to let you quickly skim them, then hand you the full story if the headline is interesting. It’s incredibly convenient, and one of those issues the internet is uniquely able to solve.
Some websites will have an RSS icon. It’s often a dot with waves emanating from it, kind of like a wifi symbol, but sideways. Sometimes it’ll just say, “RSS.” Often it can be a bit hidden. Sometimes you just have to add “rss” to the end of a URL, like so: https://leafandcore.com/rss. Other times, it’s “rss.xml,” or “feed.rss.”
What if you can’t find an RSS feed at all? The right app might be able to help.
Step Two: Gather the News
I’ve used an RSS reader for years, even when Apple still supported subscribing to RSS feeds in the mail app. However, ones I’ve used in the past have shut down. Years ago, I tried a few others and didn’t like them much. After much trial and error, I’ve settled on NetNewsWire, and I’ve been happily using it for many years now. It’s a fantastic free app that can even hunt down the RSS feed for a URL. So, if you don’t know what the RSS feed is for a website you browse, you can just paste in the URL, and NetNewsWire will often figure out the rest. It can also import and export lists of feeds, so you won’t have to re-make them if you’re moving to it from another app, storing your subscriptions, or exporting them to another service.
The article that inspired this post also mentioned Reeder 5, a paid app, and Feedly. I had tried Feedly in the past, but didn’t like it much and wanted a solution that could sync across my macOS and iOS devices. At the time, NetNewsWire was that, and I haven’t looked back. However, I will admit, NetNewsWire has some issues with iCloud syncs, and the solution is to either wipe out your iCloud account and re-inport your feeds or just leave your iPad or iPhone on and updating as long as it takes. It’s frustrating, but if you’re using the apps frequently, you shouldn’t see it too often.
Another tool I use is Pocket. Find a story you want to read, but don’t have the time to read it right now? Toss it into Pocket. It’ll store your articles, can work offline, and I find it perfect for acting as a sort of “temporary bookmark” service. I’ll even add shopping lists to it, sources for articles I want to write, or just long articles that would be great for long train rides. Between NetNewsWire and Pocket, I haven’t felt the need for one of those other “curated” news apps.
Step Three: Read!
Yeah, you should have been able to figure this step out. You can easily just read stories in whatever RSS app you’ve chosen. No more reliance on suggestion algorithms, no wading through drama or hateful content. Just your news, delivered automatically. Welcome to the future, it looks a lot like the past.