Would a big media company lose traffic if they supported RSS?

An unnamed correspondent writes: “Dave, how I can explain to my large media corporation higher-ups why it’s not a bad thing that they lose traffic (and therefore revenue) if their readers are using our RSS feeds instead of visiting the site? I understand why RSS is a good idea from a user perspective, but what’s the argument from the content provider perspective? Can you feed the ads too? Is it possible to track traffic on an RSS feed to know how many people are subscribed?” I hear these questions all the time, and am glad to have an opportunity to answer them here. This site is the perfect place. First, I don’t think that providing RSS feeds, if you do it right, lowers traffic, in fact I think you can gain traffic. [RSS]