6 ms·

Kind of feels like an ad for Pearl they agreed to publish in exchange for anecdotes about working at Apple. The Apple PR statement at the end made me laugh for

• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Yes, this is obviously paid content marketing material. EDIT: The Pearl team mass downvoted me. :(
  • harryh 10y ago
    It's certainly marketing material but I don't think the NYTimes publishes paid content in the way you describe.
    • jarjoura 10y ago
      NYTimes definitely offers native advertising just like everyone else. It's way too lucrative a market to pass up. http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/as-print-fades-part-4-native-advertising-on-the-rise/ http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/as-print-fa... "There is, however, an inherent problem: If native ads look too much like journalism, they damage credibility; if they look nothing like journalism, they lose their appeal to advertisers."
      • achompas 10y ago
        Yeah agreed. For the record, they're clearly marked as sponsored posts. The URL is even marked as "paidpost.nytimes.com." Here's an example: http://paidpost.nytimes.com/cole-haan/grit-and-grace.html?_r=2#.VDvda15SKtw http://paidpost.nytimes.com/cole-haan/grit-and-grace.html?_r...
        • logicallee 10y ago
          The New York Times does not allow genuine native advertising. Pearl Automation was not able to pay the ad department a check, in exchange for writing a "native advertising" story about them. They could have instigated it. But they didn't pay for it. This wasn't paid for out of their ad budget. It's a huge win for their PR department - because they got the NYT to write that article (or were very pleasantly surprised to see it). Not paid for it.
          • narrowrail 10y ago
            >But they didn't pay for it. So the paidpost subdomain means nothing? I'm curious if that's true as it seems a rather odd choice for a subdomain.
            • grzm 10y ago
              The Pearl Automation story, which 'logicallee refers to, doesn't have a paidpost subdomain. The Cole Haan paid post which 'achompas linked to does.
              • Hydraulix989 10y ago
                Though it isn't necessarily implied that _all_ paid articles have that subdomain (somehow I feel like that would be a tricky thing to enforce at a big journalism outfit like NYT).
                • grzm 10y ago
                  Why would that be the case? Ads are handled differently than content. Paid posts I'm sure have their own process independent of content. That's what CMS does. It's also clearly marked Paid Post, and it's styling is distinct from other NYT content. [edit to add: Indeed, given the size of the NYT, adherence to a well-defined process is a necessity. The likelihood that a paid post was mistakenly displayed as content would arguably be much less.] The subdomain isn't the point, however. I was clarifying a misunderstanding in the thread. If you're aware of paid content in the NYT that isn't marked Paid Post or something similar, please let me know.
  • theoh 10y ago
    No, but it may have come to them via a press release. Paul Graham on PR from 2005: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html "PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda. If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them."
    • Hydraulix989 10y ago
      It's not dishonesty; it's just biased, and I wasn't necessarily pointing the finger at Pearl either.
      • theoh 10y ago
        I didn't mean to comment on the honesty or otherwise, those were just the paragraphs that contained the key info: PR firms feed valid facts to journalists. If a news outlet so much as carries an article about a given topic, they are exercising discretion and leaving themselves open to accusations of bias... Really it's NPoV that is the unachievable ideal.
        • Hydraulix989 10y ago
          I see, you did seem to imply that I implied that NYT/Pearl (pg favors the former when it comes to possible "bad actors") were being dishonest. I think it's an important lesson to learn how to discern whether articles are "paid marketing" or "content marketing" (or biased in other ways). Not many people know how to do this kind of critical thinking -- look at the "fake news" debacle (if anything, there is a certain blind trust people place in authority figures like the NYT). The transparency (or lack thereof) of this particular article is an important observation to note.
  • sctb 10y ago
    The guidelines ask you to please not complain about downvotes like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • Hydraulix989 10y ago
    @sctb: Can't reply directly for some reason, but sorry. To wit, after that edit, the score became a positive number again.