And for static web pages, it's acceptable.

Alas, there are precious few static web pages nowadays - it seems people
want to show off how cool they are by stuffing the pipe. I've seen
flash used to encapsulate a static image which held nothing but text. Feh.

Depends upon what you are calling "news readers"...
Do you mean "news" as in USENET...?

Yes. Those kinds of readers are specially designed for message boards.

RSS is similar in that it is especially designed for media (podcasting
and the like). Whatever came last squeezes out whatever came first,
irrespective of quality or appropriateness. So, HTML squoze
newsreaders, and RSS is squeezing HTML (et al).

Allowing the source of the information to have control over the actual
formatting / display of the information is not really objectionable to
me...

It's very objectionable to me, since it ignores the capabilities (or
lack of them) and permissions (or lack of them) of the device upon which
the information is to be displayed, and the wishes of the one who will
actually use the information.

and only allows you to pick it up by the trigger

LOL!

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.