https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/business/media/jeffrey-ep...
“The article on the Forbes website was attributed to Drew Hendricks, a contributing writer. As The Times revealed in an article last week, he was not the author of the piece. Instead, it was delivered to him by a public relations firm, and he said he was paid $600 to attach his byline and post it at Forbes.com.”
That being said, Google absolutely encourages this behavior because Forbes is very often at the top of search results.
Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for "content" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles.
Many readers don't realize that in 2010, Forbes drastically changed their website to include 1000s of freelance writers. This "contributor model" was put in place by Lewis DVorkin[1].
This is why the quality of articles on Forbes.com is very inconsistent. Other publisher websites have the same problem.[2]
EDIT: add examples to train the eye to the differences:
The following article has "Forbes Staff" as gray text next to author byline: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/07/22/the-...
In contrast, this Github article has "Contributor" as gray text next to author byline.
One can also go to the "forbes.com" main landing page and click "Editors' Picks" to see how articles from "Forbes Staff" and "Contributor" are mixed together.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/what-the-forb...
[2] http://kontrary.com/2011/04/04/the-devolution-of-the-huffing...
http://aftercredits.com is a pretty good source as well, but I checked it out after your comment and surprisingly it doesn't show in the top search results for "<movie> post credit scene".
The HN title has editorialized away from the main subject of the article, which it isn't supposed to do. You landed on the article with a false expectation set up by the HN submitter. Forbes isn't responsible for that.
https://www.joshsteimle.com/writing/how-being-a-forbes-contr...
It seems to be intuitive that if one makes X harder to get via their platform, the user will work harder to get X, but that solution rarely seems to be true.
I'm not usually dismissive, but honestly, people are free to write the article as they wish to, and we're free to read it or not. It always annoys me when people complain about recipe sites for example "I don't want to know what clothes you were wearing when you cooked it, just give me the measurements".
> waste my time as an outlet for their creative writing impulses
What gives us the right to demand something from a writer that isn't what they were writing?
It might be cynical SEO stuff, or it might just be how they like to write - but there are a lot of commenters here that won't be happy until everything is just AI-produced bullet-points.
In the case of this kind of soft/no lede, it comes off as narcissistic and time-wasting, a side-effect of having no editor to determine what is good for the publication, and no cost to cost publish an unlimited stream-of-consciousness.
The AI isn't in the "bullet-points" but in the search engine that does not differentiate well between a key term hit above the fold or spread over the broad middle of an article.
Why not?
> the only judgement that matters.
Not really - you can have multiple target audiences. I.e. you can write for yourself first, and others second - the piece being relevant, with different focuses, for different people. Which is what the majority of these pieces tend to be (if they're not purely SEO gaming)
> narcissistic and time-wasting, a side-effect of having no editor to determine what is good for the publication, and no cost to cost publish an unlimited stream-of-consciousness
What's the problem with any of that? Is everything in life to be optimised purely for efficiency of delivery?
> The AI isn't in the "bullet-points" but in the search engine
My point was rather that some people here would rather boil everything down to purely a list of facts, without any element of story or framing.
I’m not demanding anything, I’m just making a statement about my personal taste. If I click on an article, it’s because the headline interested me. If I start reading it to find the content is not at all related to that headline, I just feel annoyed and usually close the page.
I can see how it would be annoying if you're looking for something specific, but not all articles are written to be consumed in the same way.
Did they edit the article since you saw it?
In this instance, the title is an outright lie, but the time on site writing-style you describe seems to be there in full swing as well, despite the BBC's revenue model.