Tower of Babel Take 2: RSS Readers Proliferate

While most people don't know what "RSS" stands for, online editions of newspapers may begin developing their own RSS readers to preserve the "integrity" of their content.

RSS readers, such as MyYahoo, threaten to further "disintermediate" newspapers, as news aggregation sites have started to do. Mega-news brand NYTimes.com has responded to the latter trend by advertising on news aggregation site Topix.net.

The "blogosphere" is already a Tower of Babel/Babble (guess we're guilty of making it worse). More RSS readers will make it more so. While it may make sense to have this capability, the best strategy for newspapers is to leverage their local brands by improving their Web sites and showcasing the full range of their content.