As someone who primarily uses Google Reader (RSS feeds include Gothamist), his news gathering process is interesting:

Jake starts with:

   Facebook
   Twitter
   Google+
   Flickr
   Stellar

Then he goes to RSS, organized by:

   Aggregators (Techmeme/Mediagazer)
   Local Competing Sources (NYTimes local blog, etc)
   National News (NYTimes, etc)

In my own experience, Twitter is good for quick news scanning, whereas RSS is great for reading "everything".