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I'm not defending the story as a masterpiece of journalism or anything, and I'm sure it was pitched to the reporter by an interested party. But you shouldn't blame 'such clunkers as "To generate story 'angles,' explains Mr. Hammond of Narrative Science...." when Mr. Hammond has already been introduced earlier in the story' on PR agencies. They don't actually write the copy that runs in the NY Times. That particular clunker was probably imposed on the writer by the copy editor ("It's been a while since Hammond was referenced; we need to remind the reader who he is"), unless the author has internalized the style himself.

This story was provided, probably almost word for word, by a PR person to the NYT reporter.

Definitely not. The idea for the story was provided to the reporter, probably by a P.R. person. The reporter conducted interviews with representatives of the company, some of whom are quoted in the story and some of whom aren't. The reporter went away and wrote up the story himself. It was edited by at least one line editor and at least one copy editor. The reporter, line editor, and copy editor have all beaten many competitors to obtain jobs at the most prestigious company in their field.

If anyone at the New York Times were found to have submitted a story that was "provided ... almost word for word by a PR person" that person would be fired and the paper would issue a public apology.

Again, I'm not defending the story, and I'm sure the PR person who pitched it was thrilled by it. But, you know, Steve Lohr's byline is on this story, and you've accused him of pretty bad professional misconduct, and I don't think that's warranted.

Markoff once ran an article about MyWeb (yahoo's competitor to delicious) that basically took everything from PR instead of actually doing any research. No mention of competitors, let yahoo take credit for stuff other people invented, etc.

It happens more than you think.

That doesn't surprise me at all. What would surprise me would be if he copied the actual text provided for him by a PR firm, as the OP suggested Lohr had done.

Like every other daily newspaper, the Times produces some rushed, lazy journalism (as well as some very good journalism). But there are certain lines they don't typically cross, and literally taking dictation from PR is one of them. You might argue that the difference isn't meaningful, and that rules like "Don't just copy out someone else's text" are a fig-leaf to hide bigger problems. I'd have a lot of sympathy for that argument. But if we're going to criticize the Times we should criticize them accurately, for the things they're actually doing wrong, rather than accusing them of doing things they haven't done.

Exactly right. Quick bit of advice for startups here:

Last fall, the Big Ten Network began using Narrative Science for updates of football and basketball games. Those reports helped drive a surge in referrals to the Web site from Google’s search algorithm, which highly ranks new content on popular subjects, Mr. Calderon says. The network’s Web traffic for football games last season was 40 percent higher than in 2009.

This planted PR piece uses a bit of customer data to demonstrate that the technology makes great business sense. So far so good. This particular piece of data, though, will be read as "Markov chains creating content to spam up the search results" by folks inside the Googleplex, and it makes them look stupid. Don't make Google look stupid. If you do make Google look stupid, don't brag about it in the NYT. It will not end well.

Maybe they are so good they hope Google can tell their stories from human made. Although I wouldn't bet on it.

Google is already working to attribute authors to content, think of it as PersonRank. With verified real people (they are getting many signals for this such as android, chrome, checkout, places, voice, plus, etc) they may be able to combat spam like this by ranking news/stories based on the history of the author.

A single article probably not, if you examine a site producing these in high volume though you would probably notice a high level of similar words and constructs used. Even just by the speed at which certain things are posted, if something is consistently the first source after something like a sporting event they are either doing a lot of pre-writing or are generated.

It only makes Google look stupid if it's bad content that gets ranked highly. I've taken several classes with Birbaum and Hammond and the goal isn't to make bad content to fool search engines, it's to make content so good it seems as if a human wrote it. If that's actually the case there's no conflict in Google -- good content gets pushed to the top.

it's to make content so good it seems as if a human wrote it. If that's actually the case there's no conflict in Google -- good content gets pushed to the top.

There's an easy way to achieve that: have an actual human write it. This solution does not necessarily win one good will with Google: for one obvious example, most of the content farms were farming manually rather than farming with Markov chains.

I also think "good content" only craters the approach to the bridge of describing both a) what actually ranks on Google and b) what, in an ideal world, Google thinks would rank on Google.

The Submarine, by pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Ha. That article led to my first correspondence with PG. Scroll down to the bottom for the spoiler.

This is true. I've been told by PR people that 80% of the content in a newspaper or a magazine is written by PR agencies.

I have a question, though. Why don't they also create an expert system that writes PR pieces? I imagine it would be really nice tool for people in the business. You write down the variables (who, what, when)from an interview with a client in a form and you get to show him an instant first draft, you correct it together and you publish it after leaving the room.

Or even better yet, take that data and use advanced algorithms to embed mentions of clients, products and initiatives in bigger articles.

This is how a PR piece usually goes:

1. Case, problem, solution. Short story here.

2. Introduction of company

3. A Question and an Answer

4. Another look of the company, credentials.

5. This is really cool think about it. There may be a sound (text) bite here.

Do you see the patterns?

Why don't they also create an expert system that writes PR pieces?

It's cheaper and easier to just use the endless supply of interns.

Unpaid interns? Ouch. I didn't think of that.

Although there are hidden costs even behind unpaid labor. Office space, HR costs (hiring isn't easy), training, etc, etc.

It's not hard to hire people to write PR stuff. It's just unemployed english majors of which there are legions. There are no associated costs as the positions have no benefits and everyone works from home.

...and the interns get to say "I've written for New York Times" the next time they interview for a job. Everybody wins, as The Economist argued: http://www.economist.com/node/21528449

I've been told by PR people that 80% of the content in a newspaper or a magazine is written by PR agencies.

Then again, PR people have a strong commercial interest in making it appear so that only stories pitched by PR people get published.

My (few) experiences in getting stories through have been to the contrary, usually just journalists picking up something I blogged. An exotic example: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/on_usb_fingers_and_world_news/

There was a similar type of NYT article written about StatSheet last November that had the right amount of skepticism and optimism: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28digi.html

Automating long-form narrative content is a relatively new concept. It's not perfect (yet) so I appreciate the skeptics.

My guess is that in this particular case since two of the leadership (CTO and CSA) are journalism professors they didn't even need a PR firm to do this. It's possible to contact journalists direct obviously (and I've done that and landed on the cover of the WSJ NYT etc.)

I was wondering why a newspaper would so positively cover a company trying to outsource reporters' jobs to machines. "In Case You're Wondering, A Real PR Person Wrote This Column."

Same thing that happened with coverage of the Internet back in the 90's. And even if it wasn't fairly obvious what would happen back then to newspapers it certainly was a few years later when it was already happening.

Reporters are usually liberal. And they come from a time where newspapers were profitable and could be idealistic and still make money. They could answer to a higher standard because they didn't have to worry about losing their jobs for money reasons.

As far as right now the ship is going down but they still don't view the threat.

That's a jaded and misguided view of the world. Very few reporters will accept articles written by others, and they predominantly work for trade rags, not the New York Times.

Please tell me you read that article and didn't find it odd how extremely one-sided and positive it was.

Also, it happens all the time. And with a publishing machine as big as the NYT, it's bound to happen there as well. Remember Jayson Blair? Different symptom, same cause.

There's a difference between PG's submarine articles and the PR person literally writing the article.

Oh, sure, maybe they don't just accept articles written by others. But they will base things heavily off press releases. That's what press releases are there for. If reporters didn't bite, nobody in the big leagues would bother with them.

It's not just newspapers who push PR pieces. This also applies to the web (Techcrunch and Wired comes to mind).