Journalist wants press releases via RSS instead of email

Dan Gillmor of San Jose Mercury News compares emails from PR people to spam. He now asks to get press releases via RSS feeds instead of email to get rid of untargeted pitches:

“I think the press release page of a company’s site should have its own RSS feed. PR people will have a better shot at having journalists like me read their headlines if they do this.”

“The beauty of RSS is that nobody can force an RSS feed down your throat,” says Gillmor. “If there is somebody putting garbage into your feed — you can just delete it. RSS is totally opt-in — you have to want it to get it,” he explains. “I use it to keep track of many blogs and new sites, and a few smart companies such as Cisco and Microsoft are increasingly employing RSS to make PR materials available.”

Micro Persuasion has the details.

As I have mentioned before, there are only a few companies in Sweden that have started using RSS feeds for press releases. IBM and Karolinska Institutet are among the pioneers.