Either Stone didn't ask whether there was anyone else doing this (unlike a NYT reporter) or the GCC founders lied to him, because they certainly know about Kirkland North. After all, KN's founders include the original author of the game at Yale.
So much for getting leads to reporters easily in a timely manner.
Wait for the reply. The NYT is pretty good in this respect. I've managed to nail them down to admit an advert for google jobs was dressed up as an article ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1685662827/ from this hackernews article ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70827
It does seem like GXC currently has more traction than KN though, although we've yet to see anything in the genre become a successful business despite at least a couple dozen attempts.
Don't believe everything you read in the NYT. They've run games at a lot of schools, but none of them really took off. Whereas the game Kirkland North ran for Stanford spread to a quarter of the student body in two weeks.
But they are trying by loading up on "press ammo". Compare
- http://gocrosscampus.com/press
and
Don't even get me started on the NYT. Every time they mention the illegal wiretapping they still describe it as starting after 9/11, even though their own reporting shows this to be false. The whole paper is bullshit propaganda.