That's one question, sure, but there's nothing fundamental about it. Here's a second question: should I have to go to the frontpage of a website to find out what's new on it, or get notifications automatically when there's something new?
Here's a completely unprocessed feedreader that I built as a Firefox extension until #$%# Mozilla killed it: https://github.com/akkartik/spew. It answered your question with, "why yes, read each article precisely as it was intended to be read on its own website," but still used RSS feeds for push notifications. Best of both worlds.
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Here's a third question: should I prioritize articles based on how their website shows them to me, based on when they're posted, or by some other prioritization? This may be what stunted RSS: people chose with their feet to prioritize socially (reading what their friends shared: Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or by collaborative filtering (reading what people like them read: Reddit, HN, Lobsters, etc.)
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Here's a fourth question: do I want to be notified of every single post from a source? And this may be RSS's remaining niche. I no longer use it for high-volume sites like CNN or Buzzfeed. Those need prioritization. I do use it for ~250 extremely low-volume sources (that cumulatively yield a dozen or so stories a week) from whom I want to see everything: http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml.
Here's a completely unprocessed feedreader that I built as a Firefox extension until #$%# Mozilla killed it: https://github.com/akkartik/spew. It answered your question with, "why yes, read each article precisely as it was intended to be read on its own website," but still used RSS feeds for push notifications. Best of both worlds.
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Here's a third question: should I prioritize articles based on how their website shows them to me, based on when they're posted, or by some other prioritization? This may be what stunted RSS: people chose with their feet to prioritize socially (reading what their friends shared: Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or by collaborative filtering (reading what people like them read: Reddit, HN, Lobsters, etc.)
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Here's a fourth question: do I want to be notified of every single post from a source? And this may be RSS's remaining niche. I no longer use it for high-volume sites like CNN or Buzzfeed. Those need prioritization. I do use it for ~250 extremely low-volume sources (that cumulatively yield a dozen or so stories a week) from whom I want to see everything: http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml.