[codydh]

The point still stands that what Google Reader was and what you want is an RSS reader.

Unless I'm missing something, they never did anything unique to "use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted"—it was just an RSS reader, and what you've described is exactly how I use my reader of choice (Feedbin). Many modern offerings even offer a feature to pull the full text for articles where it's not included by default.