IIRC, a lot of the pushback against Strunk & White is against its proscriptive viewpoint towards language, which is a philosophical battle. I don't think this quite merits a "they don't what they are talking about" when it comes to evaluating their writing advice.
Fair enough. I think "The Elements of Style" is aimed more toward people who must communicate effectively with the smallest number of words, where efficiently conveying information is the only priority.
Obviously someone writing creatively is free to ignore these journalism guidelines. On the other hand, many well-known writers first learned their craft at newspapers where the principles of Strunk & White (or its predecessors) were fully accepted -- Samuel Clemens and Ernest Hemingway to name just two.
> Fair enough. I think "The Elements of Style" is aimed more toward people who must communicate effectively with the smallest number of words, where efficiently conveying information is the only priority.
See http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction, if you want to communicate succinctly. The Economist's style is just one possibility, but they do manage to write short and efficient pieces.
But: Please do not recommend Strunk & White. They don't know what they are talking about. (See your own link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style#Criticism) and the blog posts cited http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1485 and http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1369 .)