A great RSS app should offer a powerful search function. It should support tagging, bookmarking, scoring or point systems, categories, and a "read later" feature, among other things.
You don’t need to eliminate news sources — just use filters and search tools to surface what matters to you.
An ideal RSS reader should also be smart enough to bypass things like Cloudflare and other unnecessary protections that break RSS functionality. Unfortunately, many mobile RSS apps fall short in this regard — and mobile is king these days.
To get something truly useful, you often need to self-host. But most people won’t go that far.
Personally, I self-host my RSS reader. I even built my own client, since I wasn’t aware of KaraKeep (formerly Hoarder) at the time. I’m still using my custom app because it’s now very versatile, and I’m not sure KaraKeep would meet all my needs.
Links:
https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive - my own project
https://github.com/AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS - all about RSS