The BBC News RSS feeds have made it much easier to keep track of areas of the news that you're interested in. But it would be good if you could keep track of individual news stories, that is, news items which form part of a story (such as a trial, or controversy, or election).
This could be done by just having even more specific RSS feeds, and then using a news-reader to keep track of them.
Great idea. You know it's a good one when it makes you wander why it's not been done already.
I agree. The thinking behind this is to think of news as being more like 'narrative' (see my link above) whereby articles are sorted into narrative threads which people can subscribe to or ignore.
The way that we typically consume news has always frustrated me, as we just get daily snippets, each of which fit into a wider narrative context that you have to keep track of yourself. And yes, often there is no 'END'.
Some stories, like climate change, or the oil market, are ongoing. Others have more specific timeframes, like elections, court cases or specific disastors.
Publishing RSS feeds would only be a start. Subscribing to tons and tons of RSS feeds is clunky, no matter what aggregator you're using. Ideally you'd have some kind of web-based reader where you could see at a glance which stories are active, which are dormant, and which have ended.
It would almost be an extension to the "See Also" block on certain news stories - when a new story references the one to which a user is subscribed, the user is notified. Mini-trackbacks, in a way.
The way that we typically consume news has always frustrated me, as we just get daily snippets, each of which fit into a wider narrative context that you have to keep track of yourself. And yes, often there is no 'END'
Wow, a simple but powerful idea that would put the reader in charge.
If backed up by actual reporting, you would be able to find out "what happened in the end". Often the end of a story is much less sensational than its beginning and gets buried in the back pages.