Charles from the Guardian explains why he isn’t reading emails anymore.
Feeds matter:
So I’m not going to read things that are obviously press releases because the possibility of it just being annoying or irrelevant is too great; I’m going to go to my aggregator instead, because I’ve chosen every feed there for its potential interest.
Doesn’t that mean that you are allowing others to filter your news? How likely is that decision to generate breaking, timely and interesting news stories? It seems the risk is one of me-too reporting. Is that what your readers want/need?
Gunther – I called it my “aggregator” because I don’t watch news sites through it, I tend to watch people who are doing other things for themselves. One can pick up trends among the people who are leading-edge, if you pick the right feeds.
But press releases really aren’t news. They’re a sort of manufactured.. thing. Occasionally there’s something useful; but news – in general – deals with *issues* and *questions*. Press releases are announcements. They don’t intersect as often as their generators would like.