NewsAnchored promised “GUARANTEED publishing services” without dealing with “grumpy newspapers”. He runs a network of sites where customers can post whatever they want for $1,500 a month. The company’s site looked a lot like Rolling Stone, USA Today and other brands until BI reached out for comment. Loading Loading something.
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A company that sells guaranteed “news” coverage created copycat versions of brand news websites, including Rolling Stone, MarketWatch, the New York Post and even Business Insider, and filled the sites with hundreds of seemingly generated articles by AI
NewsAnchored, which does not disclose the full names of its owners or corporate leadership, markets its 30 “reputable” websites to public relations firms and search engine optimization agencies to manufacture positive Google search results for to their customers.
But the company’s websites blatantly ripped off national news brands, and appear to be full of AI-written garbage. Until BI contacted for this story on December 5, the Music Observer website was in the clear imitation from Rolling Stone. The green and black letter of the Daily Market The logo closely resembled MarketWatch’s. The New York Post’s iconic cursive type, in all caps, with shadows on a red background, was crudely imitated by a site called Entertainment post. And the US Reporter logo looks a lot like USA Today’s.
At least six of the sites were redesigned to remove similarities to established media brands after BI contacted the company for this story.
“Whoever created this website seems to think that if they don’t use the name, they’re free to do whatever they want. That’s definitely not the case,” said Eric Perrott, trademark attorney at Gerben Perrott.
For as long as there have been search engines, there have been website owners who have tried to game them, but it seems that generative AI is allowing sites like those run by NewsAnchored to produce an impressive amount of junk: Five “authors” for Music Observer published. 150 items only on December 11th. The authors appear to be fake, and all articles reviewed by BI appear to be AI-generated rewrites of pieces published by Billboard.
The services offered by NewsAnchored are also not that valuable, said one industry expert. Eric Carrell, CEO of the search engine optimization company DoFollow, said the NewsAnchored sites he reviewed had little traffic and are not trusted by search engines. The websites they link to include family-owned businesses, such as local cleaning services, which are likely sold to them by SEO vendors, Carrell said.
“These small brick and mortar businesses, I guess they need SEO and hire someone from Fiverr,” he said. “These people have no idea that the money they’re spending is having no effect.”
A fake Insider feature
NewsAnchored is marketed to businesses that want publicity and struggle to get it.
“Instead of spending 20 hours a week pitching to grumpy newspapers,” he says on his home page, advertisers can offer their clients “GUARANTEED publishing services” on their websites that, if you squint and don’t you read them, it seems News.
Ryan Croy, who runs the Los Angeles public relations firm Public Haus Agency, said his mention on the NewsAnchored Influencer Daily website wasn’t what he was looking for because of the content — his priority was getting backlinks for increase your company’s SEO.
“I didn’t even know it was a site network. I basically chose from a menu of different outlets, low cost and just to affect my SEO,” he said. He summed up a conversation with an SEO consultant this way: “I said, ‘Okay, this site has a domain authority of 45.'” They said, “If you get two or three, that’ll help you.” .
Some of NewsAnchored’s brilliant post topics are small businesses that may struggle to get traditional news coverage. Others are more dubious: BI found at least two NFT projects, including one involving a businessman who had been sued by the Federal Trade Commission, that were highlighted on NewsAnchored sites.
Another subject of NewsAnchored’s puff pieces is Lance Dion, a supposed branding expert. Dion, whose full name is Lance Dion Ashley, was sentenced to a year in prison in 2022 for tax evasion and lying to the IRS. Efforts by BI to reach Ashley through her attorney, phone numbers, email and social media were unsuccessful.
A Business Insider reporter first found NewsAnchored while reporting on Wealth Assistants, a company that claimed it could help investors get rich on Amazon. An archived version of Wealth Assistants’ website said it appeared on “US Insider,” a website whose logo looked almost exactly like the old Business Insider logo.
US Insider changed its logo and website earlier this year to look less like the archived versions of BI. But NewsAnchored has not backed down from ripping off other media outlets; in fact, it seems to have accelerated.
In June, Music Observer The website looked nothing like Rolling Stone’s, but recently tried to duplicate the look and feel of the much more well-known brand. Shortly before this article was published, Music Observer reverted to the logo it had been using in June.
Contacts at Rolling Stone, Dow Jones and other publishers named in this story did not respond to requests for comment. But Perrott, the trademark lawyer, said they would have a good case in court, even though it would cost thousands of dollars in litigation fees and there is no guarantee the companies will get any money back.
It’s “a very cynical attempt to assemble the layers of a brand,” he said.
Who is NewsAnchored?
Although NewsAnchored lists 30 news brands on its website as part of its “Credibility Bar,” these “reputable” brands reveal little about who publishes them. NewsAnchored’s terms of service mention a company in Wyoming, where corporate officers are not public, called NA Publishing Group LLC, which was incorporated Sept. 13.
At a glance, almost every website operated by NewAnchored looks like a genuine media outlet. In press releases, NewsAnchored calls itself a “media conglomerate” focused on “impact journalism.” But there are no juicy chapters or hot takes, just a mix of what appear to be AI-rewritten articles and insipid pablum about minor figures (posted with lots of links).
The listings on the site don’t look real either. A biography of “Melanie Moore” from Entertainment Post or “Collaborator 4,” as she is referred to in the URL, says she was born into a film-making family and attended college, but does not provide specific, verifiable biographical details, a common thread in NewsAnchored “writer” biographies. No Melanie Moore description could be found using any search method, and none of the headshots Business Insider performed reverse image searches for resulted.
A clue to their business model can be found on a reference page linked by Dillon Kino, Director of Marketing at NewsAnchored. The page offers “unlimited article placements,” including “free access to Article Genie (AI writer tool)” for just $599 a month. The regular rate, according to Kino’s referral page, is $1,500 per month.
Kino and others at NewsAnchored never responded to BI’s inquiries. On December 13, shortly after BI emailed Kino a list of facts we wanted to publish, at least six NewsAnchored websites changed their logos to look less like those of established media properties. Kino’s referral page also disappeared.
Carrell, the SEO expert, said many clients are still apprehensive, in his opinion, of having backlinks to AI-generated content. G/O Media, which publishes AV Club and Gizmodo, and Arena Group, the publisher of Sports Illustrated, have been embarrassed after publishing AI-generated content with factual errors and fake authors.
“The way a lot of people see the industry is that Google will want to see content written from first-hand experience,” he said. “And that’s not something AI can do. So our customers don’t use AI content that I know of.”
Kino was the only NewsAnchored executive to use his full name and actual photo on his website. The others use first and last names and sketches instead of photographs.
The company’s CEO is named in a press release as “Oliver T.” and includes only five employees on LinkedIn.
Even for Carell, the brazenness of the mimicry was unique. “I hadn’t seen people directly trying to take down other websites,” he said. “I hadn’t seen that before.”
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