Monday, September 20, 2004

eWeek Stumbles On RSS

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?

Reference: eWeek [ Read more ]

Readers' Comments

2004-09-25 21:02:08

Adriana Cronin-Lukas

"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...

2004-09-21 18:29:34

Harold

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.

2004-09-21 17:53:16

Jules

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

2004-09-21 10:11:47

Tim Duckett

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?

2004-09-21 02:17:14

dub

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

And 'ambiguos' is a typo.

2004-09-20 22:34:00

Jason Koulouras

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

posted by Robin Good on Monday, September 20 2004, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

2105

	RSS Feed

	Mail