I have for a long time believed that the web would spell the end of the newsletter.

For the printed newsletter the end will be a long time coming. Print will not die anytime soon and the printed newsletter, smart and portable, will continue to be popular until the current generation, weaned on the internet, hold sway.

But for e-newsletters, the end is nigh. Aren’t you fed up with unwanted emails cluttering up your inbox? First there’s the illegal spam; then there’s the legit emails from vendors you bought something from but really don’t want to hear from weekly; and finally there’s the email newsletters you signed up for but which arrive not when you want, but when they want, and where the only items of interest are three or four screenfulls down. Even receiving the stuff you want leaves a bad impression.

That’s “push” publishing for you. Blogging is changing that. As publishers cotton on to the power of blogging, they will blog their newsletter updates and interested punters will subscribe to their RSS feeds. For a while publishers may feel they need to produce both, but I suggest they drop their e-newsletters immediately. If someone is savvy enough to sign up to an e-newsletter, they will be savvy enough to subscribe to a feed … sometime soon.