I've learned by now how to read the bylines in news articles. The source makes a difference regarding the density of grammar/punctuation/factual errors.

"Special To {a paper or other outlet}" means it was written as a press release or other promotional piece, often by someone with little or no training beyond high school English, if that.

"Special For {a paper or other outlet}" can be a press release, but more often it's a feature written offshore, whether about a local event or otherwise. Sometimes, a local group like Boy Scouts can write or sponsor a feature with this type of byline - those are usually better-written than the generic features.

"{name} for {paper etc.}" is a story commissioned by the news organization but not written by one of their employees, or written by a news aggregator for the general market a paper is in and picked up by the paper. Very often written offshore by non-English speakers based on brief Internet research. Very common in local papers.

"{name} of {paper etc.}" is somebody who actually works for the news organization, and might even be a trained reporter. Very rare these days in local papers, and becoming less common even in the large metropolitan rags.

Sometimes a story might be by "{paper} Staff" which is equivocal - could be anything they pay for, not just local employees. Local school sports may be covered this way.

Anything else that has a byline is probably an opinion piece or a column of some kind. Some of those are local people, but the big news organizations (McClatchy, Hearst, Tribune, etc.) also distribute them nationally.

If there's no byline at all, it's almost certainly a press release.

The problem with Internet and broadcast, of course, is that there's often no place for attribution so you have no idea what the source of the story is or even, sometimes, whether it's factual. Best to check multiple sources with different news-gathering organizations before relying on information.

Oh yes, the thread was about scientific papers. Similar issues can be found there in recent years especially with the many no-charge/boutique publishers especially on the Internet - check references carefully if you intend to use some information in anger. One of the few things useful about the high-cost commercial journals is that they have enough money to do at least minimal editing for style and spelling, in addition to having enough peer review that at least the more ridiculous studies get weeded out.

Happy St. Pat's Day!