RSS

Tom Murphy points another one of Keith O'Brien's great articles on technology and public relations.

Many RSS evangelists say that journalists are usually among the early adopters and are utilizing this technology to get leads. The ability to filter by source or keyword gives reporters the opportunity to receive only receive beat-specific stories. With RSS feeds, journalists are much more able to filter out what does not pertain to them. While this could initially worry PR professionals that their messages can be easily ignored, the truth is (and was) that that has always been the case. With RSS, the important messages will have a much higher likelihood of reaching the journalists. And while journalists might ignore the message, it will get delivered regardless of the message, whereas a spam blocker could snare an e-mail.

The whole issue of search is going to change the humble art of the press release. If you want your story picked up, you must choose your very carefully.

(emphasis Techoflak)

on edit-

Micropersuasion points to some excellent links explaining RSS:

What is RSS?

RSS Readers

In the comments at Micropersuasion, Elizabeth Albrycht captures the small business dilemma perfectly:

Now, there is an important point here. RSS is great for distributing news once someone knows to subscribe to the feed. If a journalist doesn't know your client exists, then you have to use email/phone/meetings -- all of the traditional PR techniques -- plus blogs etc. in order to introduce that client. Then, RSS can take over from there for press release distribution.