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Comment by friendly_chap | Hacker News Reader

Shameless PR piece. I wonder how much do you have to pay to get fluff articles in the NY Times? Does anyone know, even if just approximately?

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This is the NYT magazine; I see it as more like travel writing than anything else. One of the downsides of digital articles is that it's no longer clear which section of the paper they're in and therefore whether they should be considered reporting, investigative reporting, reprinted press releases, "lifestyle", or whatever.

I suspect they "paid" simply by having an interesting enough story, giving free accomodation to the writer of the article, possibly other expenses included, and giving access to the founder.

It's not exactly a pure puff piece either. The writer (https://twitter.com/chaykak) puts in subtle clues that he regards it as a Ballardian dystopia, and has retweeted someone's description of his article as "The Talented Mr Ripley, but with digital nomads"

Exactly. I don't write a lot of reviews and other pieces that are mostly disconnected from my day job. But I still get maybe 50 pitches a day. Most are shotgunned crap that have nothing to do with what I write about. And most of the rest just don't interest me. But every now and then, I get a pitch to review a book or gadget or service that looks interesting and I take them up on it. Absolutely no guarantee of a positive review but, if they get me to look, it's just PR doing their job.

Too many people here have this ivory tower fantasy of writers sitting in their offices thinking great thoughts and coming up with ideas about their next article out of the aether.

>has retweeted someone's description of his article as "The Talented Mr Ripley, but with digital nomads"

Everyone who watched that movie felt a pang of longing to live that way; it's still selling the experience to the reader

I think it's less about paying NYT and more about finding a story that they think their readers want to read. If NYT content were just advertisements / sponsored content, people wouldn't read it, and that'd hurt NYT's brand. I doubt they paid for this.

As has been mentioned, it's not a case of paying, it's simply doing the job of PR.

It depends on the cost structure of the PR contract - it's quite likely they just provided services for free (and then paid for transport). Which isn't dissimilar to pretty much all PR work. Although when I used to do video game reviews a long time ago, the PR agency would actually had to prove ROI over the RRP of the review copy of the game (£40) sent out, rather than the unit cost (a few pence for the DVD + postage) - so the "cost" of the journalist visit might be booked at a much higher rate.

Traditionally, the value is based on the AVE (some agencies still use AVE...) vs perceived uplift in interest. When you should start worrying about integrity is when there are follow links in the article with some kind of explicit UTM tracking. Something getting increasingly pervasive with the digital PR/SEO side of things.

The New York Times has a very strict ethics policy regarding coverage of travel related topics. They don't accept free lodging, junkets, etc, from the subjects of coverage.

https://www.nytco.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/NYT_Ethical...

I think the MO is generally to sweeten up the journalist, not the paper; actual paid adverts need to be marked as such. Roam will have a PR agency with relationships with journalists who they keep sweet, and will occasionally suggest should write articles about their clients.

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