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Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

> When Tesla first approached The New York Times about doing this story, it was supposed to be focused on future advancements in our Supercharger technology. There was no need to write a story about existing Superchargers on the East Coast, as that had already been done by Consumer Reports with no problems!

As compelling as this blog post is, this statement really stuck in my craw. NYT, nor any other news group, is beholden to your ideal article. To make matters worse, it was Tesla approaching NYT, not the other way around. So no Elon. Just because the article didnt cover what you wanted it to cover, doesn't mean you can get your panties in a bunch about it. The truthfulness of the article is a whole other matter entirely, but as someone who studied journalism, I have to give him a big "fuck you" for this imperialistic notion.

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But that's how PR works. A company or their PR agency pitches a story to the journalist, who is constantly in search of good content in exchange for publicity. While the journalist and the publication get the final say, there's an agreement of what's going to be covered, and what's out of bounds. What Musk and Tesla are doing here is sinking PR agencies' willingness to work with the Broder and NYT on a future story and reducing the chances they will get media test drives of cars in the future.

The NYT is huge and important, so they'll never be completely shut out. But I'm guessing they'll be pretty far down the waiting list for the Tesla Model X media car.

  While the journalist and the publication get the final say,
  there's an agreement of what's going to be covered, and what's out of bounds.

No. There is not. There is the notion of "off the record" when talking to sources. However NYT never agrees to whats being covered in a PR sense.

Editorial policy is pretty clear on most things like that.

Whenever we visited Google's office and such we were forbidden to sign the standard NDA's at check-in. It was fun to watch the people at the front desk get flustered ("No one ever declines the NDA!")

> However NYT never agrees to whats being covered in a PR sense.

Maybe not formally but if the subject of the article has anything the NYT wants like advertising revenue, insider information, scoops or exclusive access then you can be sure the NYT has an incentive to be cooperative that is directly proportional to how much it values receiving these benefits in the future.

In the case of Tesla this incentive is essentially zero.

The NY Times is not a PR outlet. It is a newspaper first, and moreover, is an investigative newspaper. If Tesla wanted a puff piece they should have gone with a blog.

Exactly! It's a very cynical view of the media and unfortunately one I encounter too often among tech vendors. This statement makes everything else seem like sour grapes, regardless of the facts of the matter.

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