I live in Washington State and my local newspaper is a bit of a joke. With this in mind, I tend to prefer the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to get my local news. Much to my delight, today I discovered that they are now offering RSS feeds. This rocks! My favorite newspaper has enabled me to use my favorite method of browsing headlines! Life is good. :-)

Local newspapers are finally beginning to offer content that can be pulled into your favorite aggregator. I consider events like this to be a catalyst for a possible Paradigm Shift in the local print media. Imagine RSS becoming so mainstream that every local newspaper across the nation is using it on a permanent basis. National print media has offered feeds like this for awhile, but seeing this on a local level is truly awesome!

Are we witnessing the birth of a grassroots movement? I believe it is possible. I have not seen such momentum behind any one internet related subject since Google. It is my personal belief that RSS will eventually become the biggest thing since open source software. Here?s the catch though. We have to get the word out. Tell your local newspaper that they need to offer RSS feeds to their subscribers. Show your friends how to use an aggregator. Teach people about the benefits of using RSS to share content with others. Then teach them to teach their friends. Are you getting my point? It is up to readers like you to enable these changes to happen.

Need a bit more motivation? By doing this, you will inadvertently become an active participant in the war against spam. Granted, RSS may not “seem like” it has anything to do with fighting spam directly. Oddly enough, it actually does. By providing a viable alternative for sending and receiving content, we begin to leave spammers out of the loop altogether. The best part is that we do not have to sacrifice any of our favorite content to do it. ;-)