How to get started with your own news feed.

Here's a step by step guide for getting into the news feed world.

First you create the news feed for your own internal use. To help support your editorial people. Ask around for links to the other reporters, news orgs, bloggers they read regularly. Then compile a list of their feeds.

Create a flat text file with the URLs to the feeds, one per line.

Download River5 and follow the setup instructions. You already have your list file ready, put it in the lists folder then fire up River5.

Wait a couple of hours. Have a look at the river. Add some more feeds to the list. Repeat until you have a resource that your editorial people use.

Don't forget to include your own feeds in the river. Everyone needs to know what other people in the org are writing about.

Then tell your readers about this list. Solicit their feedback, then ask them for feeds that they love, no guarantee you'll add them to the river, but try to.

At this point you'll probably get more ideas. So iterate, improve, and hopefully send me an email telling me how it's going. I love to learn about real users' experiences.