1.She's simply incorrect. PR Newswire offers completely individualized feeds by content category.
This is quite easy to see by going to http://www.prnewswire.com and going to the "Today's News" section and then selecting by Industry. Even deeper, they can customize a feed by company, geography, etc. How do I know this? Because we're customizing the RSS feeds for display into the PR Newswire Mediarooms.
Judy might want to get her facts straight.

2.It wasn't Judy -- she was just quoting Chris, a reporter, from a listserv. He's in the UK; is it different there?

3.No...it's the same there. Sorry to hack on Judy...she was just relaying the snarky message from Chris. HE should get his facts straight. PRN has been all about RSS for about 18 months now.

4.PR Newswire may have an excellent system set up for customizing RSS feeds, but I just spent half an hour on their site and the best I could manage was to subscribe to their RSS feed that publishes ALL news releases.

I was able to create a customized profile that narrows the selection of releases I see, but it wasn't obvious to me how you then get an RSS feed of that customized profile.

5.Shel,
you're right...I apologize. Part of what I was discussing in my initial comment is the customized news feeds available only to member journalists through PRNJ or PR Newswire for Journalists, which is accessed by registered members via username and password. Sorry I wasn't more clear. The public site does not offer that level of customization.

6.Sorry I meant to respond to Eric. I've written about three chapters worth today and I'm a little brain-dead. Eric, I could certainly show you offline if you're interested in seeing it through the PRNJ interface.

7.Sure, Dee. I'm at eggertson at gmail dot com

I actually WAS in the PRNJ section, I just couldn't figure out how to get what I wanted out of it.

Or IM me at textwrap at gmail dot com

8.Thanks for the "exposure" Shel (I think). As it happens I'm a relatively newbie to that listserv and have been lurking to date (although I did contact another member directly yesterday, to inquire further about the mediawomen's listserv she referenced).

Anyhow, I felt obligated to contact Chris Edwards this morning and tell him how his post went out to a wider audience. I've invited him to pay a visit to your blog, as well as (possibly) comment. Let's hope he does; in my short time on this listserv I've found Chris Edwards to be incredibly generous in sharing information and opinions. And I don't find him or the others "snarky;" however, I do very much enjoy the wonderful British sense of humour and camaraderie that is often very evident. (When you find yourself frequently laughing at a computer screen you know you're on to a good thing.)

9.Hi, I'm the person who posted the comments about RSS in the first place*.

I should put the comments into some sort of context as it was a follow-up to a thread about the usefulness of XML and RSS for disseminating PRs from a hack's point of view. I should also point out that I am sceptical about RSS for this purpose because from what I have seen of the underlying protocol, it relies on PRs or PR distribution sites pre-selecting for the journalist what they should see rather than providing a ready means at my end for filtering the stuff pouring from the PR firehose.

On the other hand, if BW, PRNJ and a bunch of the other news services allow personalisation of the RSS feeds, then Safari 2 could make for a more useful way of aggregating and browsing that stuff than piling through emails in Entourage every few hours. So, I'm willing to try it. However, I feel that RSS aggregators have some way to go before they become more useful than the email bulletins for this particular use.

The Businesswire service is the one I came across first and purely by accident. I'm a subscriber to both Businesswire and PRNJ and only found the BW RSS stuff while using the site rather than waiting for the next email dump. I then went to PRNJ to see what they were up to and, found an announcement on the PRNJ home page, only to find that Safari choked on the XML/RSS link if I tried to click it. And then that worked, it turned out to be for the whole PRN feed. I had a look around to see if there was a more personalised version on the My PRN pages, but nothing about RSS there.

I agree that PRNJ does filter material for me on the My PRN page and through the email bulletins, but as far as I aware PRNJ does not currently do that in RSS form. If someone does know a link for getting personalised RSS from PRNJ, then feel free to point me to it. I might drop PRN an email to see if they are working on this. I can't imagine they aren't to be honest, but they may have felt rushed by BW's move into pushing RSS before their software was ready for primetime (that is pure speculation BTW).

And I've now learned what snarky means.

10."Snarky" is actually a bit of an underhanded compliment. I borrow from Urban Dictionary here:
snarky
"(adjective) describes a witty mannerism, personality, or behavior that is a combination of sarcasm and cynicism. Usually accepted as a complimentary term. Snark is sometimes mistaken for a snotty or arrogant attitude.
Her snarky remarks had half the room on the floor laughing and the other half ready to walk out."

I am a big fan of British humor as well. Eric and Chris, I'll be in touch regarding "how to." Judy...sorry for my knee-jerk response...

Cheers all!