I imagine they forgot to explicitly list that because avoiding undisclosed paid promotions is so baked into the ethics of journalism that saying it out loud didn't cross their minds.
I think an important piece of media literacy is being able to tell if a publication is likely to follow journalistic ethics or not. SF Standard pass that test for me.
Injecting Gaza, assault rifles and vague implication of conspiracy (with Jews lurking on the background because you must respect the founding pillars of the genre) into an article that is supposedly about tech startup founder - is exactly what I expect from top ethical journalistic standards. Not.
I mean I get it. Who doesn't have an AI code generation tool now? It's like having a website in the first dotcom boom era (yes, Gandalf, I was there). No pop, no buzz, not hot and juicy enough. But add a little of intifada there, a fight against some murky forces of darkness (that throw hundreds of millions of vc money at the intrepid hero) - and maybe you got something. That's how journalism is done.
It's clearly access journalism - the Replit press team set this up, and the SF Standard took the opportunity.
For Replit it's a good way to raise the profile of their founder, important for this phase of the company.
The SF Standard get an interesting profile out if this because Masad is an unconventional shape of founder. The Palestinian angle is a great hook to build a story around, especially right now. The Standard's editorial brand involves presenting tech stories from their own unique angle which makes this a good fit for them.
See my earlier point that this article is meant to read like fiction for a demographic that are not actually involved in using any of this tech on the daily.
