Kudos to the San Diego Union-Tribune for a bold effort to appeal to its future customer base. It hasn’t been without critics. I’ve heard from plenty subscribers accustomed to thumbing through their paper with the morning coffee that aren’t too pleased with the reduced content and enlarged “tabloid” style font. But to UT’s credit, future subscribers, with Blackberries in one hand and iPads in the other, aren’t the type to sip the morning paper. As for me, a person that consumes mass media at the speed of IBM’s latest processor, the redesign is somewhat irrelevant. Customizable news is spoon fed to me on a needs basis for free. Allow me to double click on RSS Readers for a moment.
Most things worth reading now have an RSS feed. I can create my own personal newspaper with news delivered to me in real-time, right to my laptop or mobile device. I get the news I want, when I want it. I can get stock updates, client news, breaking stories and my favorite blogs all on one screen. I can also catch the recent sports scores and the snow report for Mammoth Mountain, as well as injury report for my fantasy football team. I can do all this before your barista can poor a venti. Talk about efficiency.
Content delivered to my desktop includes NYT Well Blog, WSJ Health Blog, NYT Biotechnology, Xconomy Life Sciences Feed, Reuters Top Business News, WSJ Top Stories, SignonSanDiego.com, to name a few. This isn’t comprehensive enough for client media monitoring, but it is more than enough for staying in front of breaking news, trends and events critical to my business and my clients’ business.
Here is a snapshot of my homepage.
I still value the daily throw-aways. They allow me to escape outside my professional and personal circles and broaden my horizons. How else would I hear about the shark attack off the California coast, the renovations at the San Diego airport, or the latest gubernatorial mud-slinging. But for the information I need to be productive and efficient, I know where to get it and I know how to get it delivered to my doorstep, err, desktop, err, laptop, err, handheld.
What news feeds and gadgets should I add to my home page? Drop me a line if you’d like a hand setting up your personal news feeds.
Jason Spark is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at jason@canalecomm.com.