eWeek, one of Ziff-Davis online portals devoted to computers and information techynologies, has just covered with several articles RSS and its potential across enterprise and individual users, but the excitement and unfamiliarity with the topic has made the "professional" journalist stumble on RSS and one of its ambiguous faces.
While reporting in the article entitled "RSS Makes Enterprise Headlines", dated September 20th, Anne Chen writes in her second paragraph: "...The RSS format is used by organizations including Microsoft Corp. and The Walt Disney Co. to push information to customers and end users. (Another form of RSS, known as Real Simple Syndication, is widely used by bloggers.)".
In case you need to check: RSS definition.
While there are indeed many alternative meanings for the acronym RSS, the RSS used by Microsoft and Walt Disney is quite definitely the very same one used by most bloggers worldwide.
In all cases Anne Chen should have written "Really Simple Syndication" and not "Real Simple Syndication". And someone else after her, approving this for online publishing should have known better too.
But evidently, few editors at eWeek really know what RSS is. Wonder why they try to turn down the RSS hype?
This is a clear sign of how incompetent the major news media outlets are gradually becoming when it comes to good reporting. A pro blogger offers much greater value without swamping my field of vision with ads everywhere.
The question is: will eWeek correct this small but fastidious error on the article?
Will they acknowledge it?
If they do both, while decreasing their content to ads ratio, they may still remain on my radar, otherwise they are bound to gentle oblivion.
What do you think?
****Update****
Tue Sept 21 - 11:47am GMT+1
Let me underline my point and let me clarify why I made it.
The issue is NOT the one about "Real" vs "Really".
The issue is about this sentence:
"The RSS format is used by organizations including Microsoft Corp. and The Walt Disney Co. to push information to customers and end users. (Another form of RSS, known as Real Simple Syndication, is widely used by bloggers.)"
Now, let me hear it clearly from you:
What is the other form of RSS that bloggers, but not Walt Disney and Microsoft are using?