Since we last listed environment-related RSS news feeds in the Nov. 2003 Environment Writer, there have been many developments in news technology.

"RSS News Feeds" are Web-based news tickers -- a scrolling list of the most recent stories from a particular source (or set of sources) that is constantly updated. You can read them on often-free "News Reader" software on your own machine, or have them appear automatically on your own Web site.

The best of the new RSS feeds for environmental reporters may be Pete Myers' Environmental Health News. For sheer breadth and volume it blows away others. Its focus, however, tends to be on environmental health and pollution issues more than natural resources issues. The foundations that fund it are listed on the site.

You can get Environmental Health News in at least three ways. First, you can browse it directly on the web at the address above. Second, you can get it as a daily e-mail update, "Above the Fold," which digests the biggest stories on the Web site (subscribe here). Third, you can get it as an RSS feed, by pasting the address (http://www.EnvironmentalHealthNews.org/rss/ehnrss.xml) into your news reader.

Environmental Media Services offers another new, full-featured RSS feed. EMS describes itself as a "nonprofit communications clearinghouse," but a big part of its content comes from its role as a press release distribution service for environmental organizations. It also collects large amounts of environmental news from independent media. You can browse to it directly or get it by e-mail, as well as getting it by RSS feed (http://www.ems.org/rls/xml_readers.xml).

Another new feed is "Your Right To Know," a blog that posts freedom-of-information and First Amendment news related to environmental journalism. It is produced by the Society of Environmental Journalists with grants from the Rockefeller Family Fund and the McCormick Tribune Foundation. You can get the same content three ways: browse to it from the FOI area of SEJ's site, get it as the :WatchDog e-newsletter (to subscribe call SEJ at (215) 884-8174), or via RSS.

Yet another RSS service comes from the Eco-Portal Web site, an unabashedly environmentalist stream of news put together by Madison, Wis., consultant Glen Barry.

One potentially big development is the offering of specialized RSS feeds by the gargantuan search-engine portal Yahoo!. This service can be very fast, and it draws news from thousands of independent media, but it does not currently offer feeds focused solely on environmental news. But if you get the feeds for health and science, much of the material you want will be included (along with non-environmental stories). Another valuable newsgathering tool is Yahoo!'s "Full Coverage" (see related article).

If you are set up to handle a lot of e-mail, the automated news alerts from Google and Yahoo may be the most powerful and precisely targeted tool of them all. The search portals will collect for you every story they get that matches your search term. You will probably need quite a few searches to cover the beat the way you think it should be covered, along with good search-engine skills. You can get e-mail alerts of matching stories either daily or as they happen. What's more, you can construct some very complex and sophisticated searches, and there is virtually no limit on the number of searches you can set. To handle the resulting flood of mail, you will probably want to automatically filter and sort your alerts into separate folders in your e-mail client. Sign-ups are straightforward on both Google and Yahoo!.