[joshu]

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.

[gabrielroth]

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.