As everyone watches yet another social media website implode (bet no-one will remember which one I mean in a couple of years), people are talking about RSS again, as a way to keep up with news without relying on a corporation. Trouble is, plenty of people (still) aren't very familiar with RSS, or at least don't know how to get going. And my bet is that at least some people want to understand, not just be pointed at yet another online app and told "use this".
For those who don't know: RSS is a kind of newsfeed (another popular kind is Atom). That's simply a way for websites to let each other know about updates such as blog posts or press headlines. At least that was the idea at first. Then some smart person realized it can be used to let people know about updates, too.
This raises a couple of questions: first, why do you need to automate that. If you only follow like five websites, you can put them on the browser's bookmark bar, and click each tab in turn while sipping coffee. But once you have fifty or more? It would be a lot easier if you could click a button and get all the latest updates on a single page, nicely sorted.
Second, you might be wondering why you need to do anything special. Can't your browser simply load each website in the background and see what's new? Well, no, because computers are dumb. They need the data in a rigid, formal structure they can parse easily, because what looks easy to humans is cryptic for computers, and the other way around.
So you have these newsfeeds, usually of the RSS or Atom variety. Used to be, browsers could detect their presence automatically and show a nice button you could click to subscribe, but they removed this ability. Nowadays most sites show a link for it; you've probably seen the orange icon with the radio wave symbol.
Follow this link. If you see a nice list of entries, you're all set; look for the button that tells your browser to start tracking it (some of them still can). But if it shows a bunch of source code instead, don't panic! There's an app for it.
Okay, there's a lot of them, but Liferea is not so different from Read You for example. Add feeds to them using the link, update all of them at once, then read at leisure.
You can even go offline to read the saved entries. Try that with a web app!
There are other tricks. You can import and export feed lists using something called OPML. You can add the site's address directly and let the reader detect existing feeds, if any (like browsers used to). You can even tell the feed reader to check for updates three times a day or whatever, but that to me seems like overkill to avoid pressing a button. Worse, it can be easily abused to hammer websites that already have enough trouble handling traffic.
Speaking of which: nowadays many websites ask for your e-mail address instead, so they'll find out who you are and spam your inbox. (Ironically, Thunderbird can read RSS feeds as easily as with an e-mail newsletter.) Others have their newsfeeds well hidden, like YouTube, or remove them entirely, like Twitter. An app like Fraidycat can still ferret out the desired updates.
But if you like this RSS thing and want to see more of it out there, your best bet is to spread the word: let people know it's an option. Thank you.
For a much more detailed intro, see RSS for Post-Twitter News and Web Monitoring and/or An Introduction to RSS and Other Feed Formats. Sqvrltastic's Full guide to RSS also teaches how to handcraft your own.