"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."

Amen to that! I understand the point you are making and the reporters errors is indeed appalling. She really ought to know better. What amazes me how journalist still think that they can get away with such howlers. It's doubly ignorant - of the fact that they will be dissected by bloggers and of the fact that google would produce the answer in a few seconds. Go figure...

Some may feel your criticism is nitpicky. It is, somewhat, but that is exactly the point. All media sources need to be thorough in their editing practices; there's too much misinformation out there already. Most web surfers, including enterprise users, have no idea what RSS is, and as they search for information about the technology, media sources need to get it right. Otherwise 5 years from now the world will still be trying to figure out what RSS is (or was).

I would disagree, however, about this being a clear sign of incompetence on the part of the major media news outlets. It seems too minor an error to discredit all major news sources.

Considering eWeek is publishing its own RSS feeds, the article by Anne Chen does seem somewhat ironic...
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1642191,00.asp

Good grief, how appalling - I shall immediately unsubscribe from all Ziff-Davis publications forthwith </sarcasm>

Unless this is post is a spoof, in which case count me suckered in - get over it! Given the holy wars raging around syndication, picking up a journalist who has the professional bravery to venture into the fight on her use of an acronym that the cogniscenti can't agree on is trivial in the extreme.

If that was the only error in the article that you found worthy of comment, doesn't it mean she's done her job well and deserves congratulations, rather than nit-picking pedantry?

I think you're making a mountain of a molehill. "real simple" vs. "really simple"? Who cares?

And 'ambiguos' is a typo.

Do you think the e-week article on playing down RSS hype is written from a devil's advocate point of view?

Or perhaps he is talking about the jump from pioneer/early adopter stage to mass audience/channel delivery potential?

There are some legitimate questions he asks - such as bandwidth and standards - as RSS grows, these will need to be addressed (and others) to cross into the mass market audience

Here is another one - I am sure this has come up before - do any of the browsers today offer an RSS plug in or window to receive syndication content in the browser directly?

Thanks
Jason