The tech news industry aside, would anyone have insight into how prevalent paying for positive news coverage is? Better still: Is there a transparency index of news organizations ?
Definitely worth a read.
"Online, the answer tends to be a lot simpler. Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to. You can't see the fingerprints of PR firms all over the articles, as you can in so many print publications-- which is one of the reasons, though they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week...
Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think."
There's also https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/