Subscribing to Newsletters via RSS

I have always been a big fan of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). For years now, I have used RSS feeds as my preferred way to keep up on the news in the web development world and beyond.

Despite their ubiquity within blogging platforms such as WordPress, RSS seems to have fallen out of favor over the years. Many mainstream news publications have eliminated RSS feeds as they chase advertising dollars, while individual creators have increasingly adopted email newsletters. I prefer RSS enough that I’ll stop reading a publication if it doesn’t support RSS. To me, it’s such a great flow – open my RSS reader, get a list of new items, and browse through at my own pace – that it isn’t worth it to go to a site that doesn’t support RSS. To read and manage my feeds, I use NetNewsWire which has been around for years. It has all the features I need – starring articles, organizing feeds by folders, and syncing across devices using Apple’s iCloud storage.

Beyond subscribing to blogs, I also use NetNewsWire to handle my newsletter subscriptions. To do this, I use the excellent service "Kill the Newsletter!". It allows you to create an email address (i.e. random-addresss-9923832@kill-the-newsletter.com) which you use to subscribe to a newsletter. It then generates an RSS feed of everything sent to that email (including confirmation emails). It’s a great way to keep up newsletters without having to resort to email.