Taking Credit Where None Is Due

There's a particular kind of opportunism that has gotten easier in the AI-content era, and it's worth naming. A preservation organization with no involvement in a project — none, not a letter of support, not a phone call, not a single appearance at a hearing — can now repost an AI-generated article about that project's approval on its own website and effectively pin the win to its own wall.

No one wrote the article. No one verified it. No one was there. But the repost lands, the logo sits next to the headline, and the casual reader walks away with the impression that the organization had something to do with the outcome.

It didn't.

Who Actually Did the Work

The Planning Board did the work. The Historic Preservation Commission did the work. Those are the bodies that read the application, walked the site, evaluated the design, weighed the testimony, and rendered a decision on the record. They sat through hours on adaptive reuse, materials, massing, setbacks, and historic character. They asked the hard questions. They voted.

The applicant did the work — assembling the team, commissioning the drawings, retaining counsel, paying the fees, standing at the podium, and carrying the financial risk through years of pre-development. The architect did the work. The contractor did the work. The neighbors who showed up and spoke did the work.

That's who deserves credit for a good preservation outcome. The people in the room, doing the actual job.

What Reposting Is and Isn't

Sharing news is fine. There's a real version of this where an organization writes, in its own voice, "we weren't involved in this project, but we want to acknowledge a strong adaptive reuse approval in our region." That's honest. That's additive.

What's happening instead is different. An AI-generated article — already a thin reconstruction of a meeting nobody on the writing side attended — gets lifted onto an organization's site, presented as relevant content under their banner, and surfaced to their audience and donors. The signal it sends is: *we follow this work, we are connected to this work, this work is part of our story.*

If the organization was actually involved, that signal is accurate. If it wasn't, the signal is a lie of association.

Worse Than Absent

Being absent from a process and then claiming proximity to its success is one thing. Being a net negative during the process and then claiming proximity to its success is something else.

There are organizations whose contribution to a project consists entirely of delay — sending letters, raising concerns at the eleventh hour, demanding meetings, attempting to relitigate decisions the proper public bodies have already made through the proper public process. That isn't preservation advocacy. It's friction. It costs the applicant money. It costs the public bodies time. It costs the project momentum.

When the project gets approved anyway — approved by the boards whose actual job it is to evaluate these applications — and the same organization turns around and reposts the approval as if it were a feather in its cap, the move isn't just dishonest. It's galling. The people whose work was obstructed get to watch the obstruction be rebranded as endorsement.

The Fix Is Easy

Don't post about projects you weren't part of as if you were. If you want to celebrate a preservation outcome in your region, write something in your own words, name the bodies and the people who actually made it happen, and be honest about your own role — or lack of one.

That standard isn't hard to meet. The fact that it isn't being met says more about the organization than any repost ever will.