Hats off to the New York Times. It’s got a well-founded reputation for strong tech reporting, but it’s not letting that tradition get in the way of making a serious bid for Dumbest Tech Story of the Year (holder: D. Mail, UK). The piece which will surely take the soggy biscuit is an August 26 effort, “Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain”, in which the Rachel Dodes writes - at suffocating length - about some muppets’ half-witted notions that their iPods are packed with artificial intelligence.

It gushes:

“Shuffle commands have been around since the dawn of the CD player. But the sheer quantity of music on an MP3 player like the iPod - and in its desktop application, iTunes - has enabled the function to take on an entirely new sense of scale and scope. It also heightens the risk that a long-forgotten favorite song will pop up, for better or for worse, in mixed company.

There is an unintended consequence of the allure of Shuffle: it is causing iPod users to question whether their devices “prefer” certain types of music.

Revere Greist, a doctoral student and amateur bicycle racer in Los Angeles, has concluded that his iPod’s Shuffle command favors the rapper 50 Cent - and perhaps more important, that it knows exactly the right time to play 50 Cent’s biggest hit, “In Da Club.” He finds the dramatic beat, coupled with the lyrics “Go Shorty, it’s your birthday,” inspirational.

[...]

The iPod ‘knows somehow when I am reaching the end of my reserves, when my motivation is flagging,’ Mr. Greist insisted. ‘It hits me up with ‘In Da Club,’ and then all of a sudden I am in da club.’”

Yes, it goes beyond parody. It’s only some 451 words later - I shit you not - that the NYT actually explains to readers why it might be that someone’s iPod tends to play music that’s appropriate to its owner. Bold italics are mine, folks, just in case you miss the brilliance of the moment.

“Mr. Ng [the presumably quite bemused iPod marketing manager] said that the technology behind the Shuffle function has remained the same since the first-generation iPod. He declined to reveal the algorithm used to generate randomness on Shuffle, but said the only reason that an iPod might seem to know a listener’s preferences is that the listener, after all, chose the music in the first place.

“I have friends who say, ‘My iPod is, like, totally into 80’s music,’ ” Mr. Ng said. “And I will say to them, ‘Well, how much 80’s music do you have on your iPod?’ ” The answer, he said, is usually an amount sufficient to ensure a steady stream of Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran.

You’d think this simple explanation would end this foolishness, but no. The piece chunters on for a further 632 words, dismissing all reasoning with “This logical explanation doesn’t always jibe with users’ experiences.”

Do go read the full version. Running to more than 1600 words, this is a truly epic homage to dumb commissioning, witless, by-the-numbers reporting, and blind editing. Some say American journalism is in crisis, but with fine efforts like this it’s surely only a matter of time before the awards start rollin’ back in.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « A grassroots battle where there is no grass
• » Three: so near, yet so far

• BROWSE / IN Web/Tech
• « Real gets burned with Apple “campaign”
• » The new iMac