Since CNN finally RSS-enabled its site this week, I thought it might be a good opportunity to re-iterate how important it is for PR pros to be using this technology to track breaking stories and monitor key blog posts.

A communicator’s daily routine means we need to scan the news each morning. My colleagues estimate that RSS readers cut the time for online news scanning in half. And that means we’re quicker to the punch with a response on behalf of a client, more current in our knowledge and quicker into the day’s priorities.

RSS is really changing media-consumption, and can put blogs on a par with corporate media businesses. Relevance and speed become the key variables when searching for stories from ‘trusted’ sources, be they blogs or established news sites. If you want to get ‘inside’ an industry, you need to use RSS to monitor the blogs and feeds about it.

As a Mac user, my favorite RSS reader is NetNewsWire, though I was also recommended News Ticker, from Null River. Personally I find the ticker style distracting, but it’s pretty slick.

For PC users, I’m told the best is FeedDemon, which seems to be popular at present.

UPDATE – Tom Murphy has an excellent post today in his PR Opinions blog about the use of RSS in PR.