Feels like there has been a bit of a resurgence lately, not that I have any hard data to back that up. The major players ie google and now apple have dumped it, but most blogs and news sites still have rss feeds.
If I site I want to follow doesn't have RSS, I reach out and let the owner know I can't follow their site via RSS. A few people implemented RSS on their blogs because of it :)
Large media outfits tend to hate RSS because it puts curation in the hands of users, and that curation function is what a lot of people will pay a lot of money to influence.
Smaller media outfits like it, because they can find readers without paying money to influence the large gatekeepers.
As blogging has "matured", the big shops are feeling more confident that they can lock folks back in to their curation.
It's the upstart outlets that I notice not having RSS at all, with a twitter handle in its place. Pass for me.
Search for what you want, click "News", scroll to the bottom of the page and create an alert.
Then you can select "RSS feed" to get a custom feed for your search terms or news topic.