The audience of Ars isn't "general" and the usage wasn't colloquial. The article is about evolution and the pressures that caused the adaptation. It would have been nice if the author had demonstrated a bit more knowledge of the topic. Its a mistake that grows less forgivable the more years that pass. Hell, I recall the days when people frequently called whales fish. That wouldn't fly in article about evolution now, and neither should this.
Dinosaur literally means ‘terrible lizard’. It was originally coined as a description for the large, extinct, giant lizards. T-Rex, etc.
That it has later come to encompass things like seagulls is more a bait and switch on the public, than the public being idiots.
You might as well beat up on someone for calling Pluto a planet. Oh wait, it technically is again? My bad. Oh wait, it’s technically a dwarf planet. My mistake again!
Clearly, I’m the one who is an idiot, and it has nothing to do with experts causing confusion because it gets them headlines/justifies their existence and makes them feel superior to everyone else.
Bait and switch? Idiots? We are just saying we expect more from science communicators. Adding "non-avian" before the word "dinosaurs" wouldn't have made the article inaccessible to folks who haven't internalized the whole notion of clades.
Do penguins and cassowary count as "non-avian dinosaurs?" The videos of cassowary definitely give me Jurassic Park vibes.
In any case, many people are aware birds are not extinct. As a result, a claim of a "mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs" would implicitly not include "avian dinosaurs." Adding the "non-avian" qualifier does not assist in describing the particular global change to which the article refers.