On one hand, I agree with his rant on other tech journalists / editors, but on the other hand, what he's essentially saying is, bias on his part is okay, or even expected, if the company he's writing about is one that he's investing in?
Given how influential techcrunch is, are you supposed to cross check all the companies in his portfolio, figure out if the company you're reading about is a competitor and then adjust for bias as you read? Isn't there a huge difference between being loosely linked to Google / FB and investing in a company?
Not disagreeing with your overall point, but being married to a Google executive is hardly loosely linked or a huge difference from an investment. A company employing your spouse may have far more direct influence on their standard-of-living and social constraints than an investment would.
Additionally, when I read Kara Swisher's article in AllThingsSD, the next thing I read was her own disclosure (http://allthingsd.com/about/kara-swisher/). It left me with the impression that she takes journalistic integrity very, very seriously (maybe even too seriously, honestly). Arrington's self-righteous, dismissive diatribe here leaves me with exactly the opposite impression about him.
I came to say exactly this. TechCrunch's constant dramas feel like I'm watching a soap opera of some sort in the name of getting more viewers. I go to a 'news' site to read news and maybe some opinion pieces every once in a while. But, TechCrunch's language and these frequent diatribes are not journalistic whatever Arrington says.
Fully agreed. Which leaves me slightly annoyed each time HN falls for it and pumps TechCrunch to the top of HN.
And then I can't refrain from posting about it, and then I lose karma because people tell me I can just ignore those headlines and scroll by. Not so, people — yes, I can try to ignore those dramas, but I feel like they take away a little bit of our hacker souls each time they make it to the top.
I don't think an article going to the top of HN means "We as a community agree with this." Rather, I think it means "We as a community think this is worth reading and/or discussing." And many of TechCrunch's articles, while being of questionable journalistic value (and that's being generous), they sometimes are worth reading and discussing.
Like this one. I think that Arrington is acting like a 10 year old, but I also think his post is worth reading and discussing.
Right, she has a very wordy disclaimer, but how is her disclaimer different from an investment disclaimer? Over the past 8 years or so every other story Kara wrote was about Yahoo while she almost never wrote about Google even though Google arguably was much more newsworthy over that period. It is hard to believe that her relationship with a Google exec didn't have something to do with that.
Its important to remember that Kara Swisher is just an employee, one who draws a salary, and therefore doesn't have an ego the size of Neptune. Arrington is a master of the universe. You can't expect him to be constrained by anything resembling ethics.
What about the many Joe average readers that criticized the situation? Should we assume Mr. Arrington thinks they should get fucked too?
Most of this comes down to the fact that there are good, established reasons why it's a bad idea to have journalists covering industry buying and selling positions in those companies based in large part on abuses that have happened.
Puffing out your chest and screaming about your competition doesn't actually change anything about the fundamentals of the issue.
"I have little hope for this industry until the last of the old guard have finally been put down."
I don't really think the "new guard" is any better - pretending a sentence at the top of some handful of articles is transparency while scores of startups send emails to a gaping black hole from which few will be saved.
They're not going to start telling people they're not getting a writeup because MA invested in a competitor, or worse suppress the news of your awesome new feature/traction and pass it on to the agile little team he's betting on (prob reaching too far on that one, not that we'll ever know though).
That is the transparency that matters, not that some fluff piece amongst the sea of fluff pieces they churn out had a more visible bias than the rest.
The right play for Arrington here: admitting he straddles a unique spot in the tech coverage universe and pledging that he will do his best to keep things straight-up. He deserves some criticism. But that said, one of the reasons he continually serves up good scoops is because he wears more than just a journalist's hat. He could have pointed that out. Instead, he let petulance leak into what could have been a thoughtful post, turning it into a rant.
I agree wholeheartedly, and was going to say something similar.
I can empathise with his difficult position. He HAS sacrificed some of the objectivity that came with his position as a "tech journalist." That's okay, in my opinion. Just own it, reassure your readership and continue with business as usual, maybe with occasional, NYT ombudsman-style updates about potential conflicts.
Really don't see the value in getting defensive and angry. I think he's just tired of Tech Crunch. Bow out, Mike.
When thinking of Arrington, I am reminded of the story about the Native American and the snake. (Guy finds and injured snake, once it is healthy it bites the guy and as he is dying he asks the snake wy he bit him after all he did for he snake. The snake says you knew I was a snake when you took me in.)
A long time ago (about a few months after the acquisition of techcrunch by AOL) i came to the conclusion that arrington is trying to get himself fired by AOL.
I happen to show some techcrunch articles to a psychologist friend of mine because she was doing some research on the tech industry and she casually mentions that all the articles by "this arrington dude" sounds like a man who is trying to get himself fired. Note this is coming from a person who is reading techcrunch for the first time and does not follow the tech industry at all.
After her comment, i did a filter on all arrington's articles and i understood what she was saying right away. All you need to do is just look at the general tone of his articles after he moves to Seattle.
So the question is why. Is he trying to end his vesting period early and get a big payout? Or is he genuinely sick and tired of the press industry?
Actually, I think Arrington has a conflict of interest with AOL. It's beginning to sound like TC is little more than a venue for him to promote startups he's invested in.
This is a non issue, everybody knows media is biased because it is made up of human beings and human beings are biased. Save the drama, consumers should always balance a story with one from another publication. It's kind of like if you see something on the fair and balanced fox news you just gotta balance it out by watching the coverage of the same event on cnn or msnbc. People who choose to be informed objectively do that anyway.
I am strongly on Mike's side on this one, because I have seen too many back deals in Silicon Valley. There is conflict everywhere and being married to a Google VP while covering the company is worse than having 1000 shares in a bunch of startups.
The truth is that everyone here wants to do the right thing and believes they are ethical enough to set aside any conflicts that may arise. I like to think that I would do that as well. In reality, it doesn't quite always work.
Let’s start out by pointing out the worst part of this: the disclosure issue trickles down into TC's journalists. A FB comment on this article, as written by Alexia Tsotsis: "'It's frustrating to read comments day in and day out about how people think TechCrunch should be, or what it's supposed to say. Arrington's response: It'll say whatever the fuck we want it to, because we're people and we find some stories interesting. That's news.'
Accurate."
This type of stuff makes me want to stop reading TC. Today. Unfortunately, I still think they’re the best at what they do (mostly due to quantity of relevant coverage).
But, to get stuck there would be to ignore the elephant in the room: Arrington. So, to refresh: the original problem wasn't just that Arrington wasn't disclosing, but that he was not running stories and possibly skewing coverage because of it.
So, what does Arrington have to say to defend himself? "But the really important thing to remember, as a reader, is that there is no objectivity in journalism. The guys that say they’re objective are just pretending."
Oooh, that's a top-notch defense. By placing the blame on everybody else, he's hoping that we'll talk about everybody else -- and then ignore him, as if he's the hero by pointing out that other people are conflicted. And, let's be fair here -- he's trying like hell to shut up anyone who criticizes him now or in the future by embarrassing them, and their colleagues, as hard as he can right in the article.
But wait, let's refocus on that last sentence -- and their colleagues. Arrington touches on Kara Swisher, and then after mentioning that she disclosed fully (which she did on the original article; see: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investi... ) he then attacked her colleague who has no relevance at all to this. To quote Arrington: "One of her writers, Liz Gannes, is married to a Facebook consultant. She covers the company and its competitors regularly. She discloses it as well, but it isn’t clear whether or not her husband has stock in Facebook. That’s something as a reader I’d like to know."
Arrington’s game here is pure deflection with an end-goal of humiliating critics as hard as he can. It’s hard to not feel sorta disgusted here.
And to those of you who say he’s trying to get fired by AOL? I think he is, too. The reason that Arrington stated that he was willing to be bought out by AOL was: "I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software."
But that's hard to believe. CrunchBase isn’t bringing in any revenue (Creative Commons Attribution License) and I doubt it can be monetized. It brings little value for anyone who isn’t interested in angel-seed startup investing.
So, let’s look at Gawker’s analysis of the TechCrunch/AOL deal:
"Although the details of AOL's purchase agreement with TechCrunch have not been released, the consensus is that AOL used a three-year earnout designed to give Arrington and other TechCrunchers an incentive to stick around and do a great job. Based on various reports, we estimate that this earnout could likely amount to $10-$15 million above the original purchase price. $10-$15 million is a significant amount of money, even to Mike Arrington. We suspect, therefore, that even if Arrington gets bored or loathes working for AOL, he won't just quit because that would mean walking away from this cash.
If AOL management gets tired of Arrington's behavior, meanwhile, they presumably can't just fire him, because this would likely trigger a full payment of the earnout. To can Arrington and avoid paying the earnout, AOL would likely have to fire him 'for cause' And given that this behavior is par for Arrington's course, it would be hard to ...
I think this is an excellent point. After all, simply disclosing a conflict of interest doesn't absolve one of the responsibility of being a good journalist. I can't help but think that, as bad as the MSM is, they don't get away with these kinds of stunts.
My gut reaction is rather the opposite - I think he is right to say he'll write what he wants.
I doubt he has to stoop so low as to speculate by hyping stock he owns. On the other hand, if he thinks some company is really cool, why shouldn't he allowed to invest in it? It's like if I discover a really cool new algorithm, why shouldn't I take advantage of it in my next project? It seems dumb to arbitrarily suppress knowledge.
I also doubt that in general the "insider trading" laws are very effective - I suppose if you play the stock market, you just have to take it into account somehow.
Arrington: "...I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software."
I'm sorry, but why does Le Kingmaker have so much trouble finding help? This sounds like a lie, but then again maybe he just doesn't pay very well for "talented" engineers. Sheesh, he's not running Booz Allen Hamilton, it's a CMS. A guy in Arrington's position has no excuse for these kinds of problems.
His going Palin means nothing to me and it sounds like he's on a narcissistic bender (for the past 3 years). If he flames out, so what? Some other Scoblite will come in and take his place just fine. Not sure what MG and some of the others would do without Arrington's ass-umbrella, though.
Hey, but you know, good for him for being a pain in AOL's ass. They've earned it. Maybe next time though he'll get acquired by a company that matters and his nutkicks will make a real difference. I guess now we have evidence that Techcrunch sold somewhere north of "fuck you money."
What did I say when the acquisition was announced? TC is going to become the TMZ of tech. I don't watch TMZ.
Arrington might be a bit whiny here but he brings up a good point: why is it not considered required disclosure to not only state your own conflicts of interests but also those of your spouse? The government considers your incomes to be the same household so why not the institution of journalism? Couldn't I just do all of my investing under my wife's name and then say I'm not conflicted?
This is why I don't subscribe to TC rss feed. I only read (some of the) TC articles which make it to the HN front page. This is exactly the kind of things what HN is for.
31 comments
[ 7.1 ms ] story [ 91.5 ms ] threadOn one hand, I agree with his rant on other tech journalists / editors, but on the other hand, what he's essentially saying is, bias on his part is okay, or even expected, if the company he's writing about is one that he's investing in?
Given how influential techcrunch is, are you supposed to cross check all the companies in his portfolio, figure out if the company you're reading about is a competitor and then adjust for bias as you read? Isn't there a huge difference between being loosely linked to Google / FB and investing in a company?
Additionally, when I read Kara Swisher's article in AllThingsSD, the next thing I read was her own disclosure (http://allthingsd.com/about/kara-swisher/). It left me with the impression that she takes journalistic integrity very, very seriously (maybe even too seriously, honestly). Arrington's self-righteous, dismissive diatribe here leaves me with exactly the opposite impression about him.
And then I can't refrain from posting about it, and then I lose karma because people tell me I can just ignore those headlines and scroll by. Not so, people — yes, I can try to ignore those dramas, but I feel like they take away a little bit of our hacker souls each time they make it to the top.
Like this one. I think that Arrington is acting like a 10 year old, but I also think his post is worth reading and discussing.
Sometimes I think TechCrunch and Michael Arrington could be a little more cordial.
On the other hand, I respect it, and him, for being open and straight forward about things.
Most of this comes down to the fact that there are good, established reasons why it's a bad idea to have journalists covering industry buying and selling positions in those companies based in large part on abuses that have happened.
Puffing out your chest and screaming about your competition doesn't actually change anything about the fundamentals of the issue.
I don't really think the "new guard" is any better - pretending a sentence at the top of some handful of articles is transparency while scores of startups send emails to a gaping black hole from which few will be saved.
They're not going to start telling people they're not getting a writeup because MA invested in a competitor, or worse suppress the news of your awesome new feature/traction and pass it on to the agile little team he's betting on (prob reaching too far on that one, not that we'll ever know though).
That is the transparency that matters, not that some fluff piece amongst the sea of fluff pieces they churn out had a more visible bias than the rest.
I can empathise with his difficult position. He HAS sacrificed some of the objectivity that came with his position as a "tech journalist." That's okay, in my opinion. Just own it, reassure your readership and continue with business as usual, maybe with occasional, NYT ombudsman-style updates about potential conflicts.
Really don't see the value in getting defensive and angry. I think he's just tired of Tech Crunch. Bow out, Mike.
I happen to show some techcrunch articles to a psychologist friend of mine because she was doing some research on the tech industry and she casually mentions that all the articles by "this arrington dude" sounds like a man who is trying to get himself fired. Note this is coming from a person who is reading techcrunch for the first time and does not follow the tech industry at all.
After her comment, i did a filter on all arrington's articles and i understood what she was saying right away. All you need to do is just look at the general tone of his articles after he moves to Seattle.
So the question is why. Is he trying to end his vesting period early and get a big payout? Or is he genuinely sick and tired of the press industry?
The truth is that everyone here wants to do the right thing and believes they are ethical enough to set aside any conflicts that may arise. I like to think that I would do that as well. In reality, it doesn't quite always work.
Accurate."
This type of stuff makes me want to stop reading TC. Today. Unfortunately, I still think they’re the best at what they do (mostly due to quantity of relevant coverage).
But, to get stuck there would be to ignore the elephant in the room: Arrington. So, to refresh: the original problem wasn't just that Arrington wasn't disclosing, but that he was not running stories and possibly skewing coverage because of it.
So, what does Arrington have to say to defend himself? "But the really important thing to remember, as a reader, is that there is no objectivity in journalism. The guys that say they’re objective are just pretending."
Oooh, that's a top-notch defense. By placing the blame on everybody else, he's hoping that we'll talk about everybody else -- and then ignore him, as if he's the hero by pointing out that other people are conflicted. And, let's be fair here -- he's trying like hell to shut up anyone who criticizes him now or in the future by embarrassing them, and their colleagues, as hard as he can right in the article.
But wait, let's refocus on that last sentence -- and their colleagues. Arrington touches on Kara Swisher, and then after mentioning that she disclosed fully (which she did on the original article; see: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investi... ) he then attacked her colleague who has no relevance at all to this. To quote Arrington: "One of her writers, Liz Gannes, is married to a Facebook consultant. She covers the company and its competitors regularly. She discloses it as well, but it isn’t clear whether or not her husband has stock in Facebook. That’s something as a reader I’d like to know."
Arrington’s game here is pure deflection with an end-goal of humiliating critics as hard as he can. It’s hard to not feel sorta disgusted here.
And to those of you who say he’s trying to get fired by AOL? I think he is, too. The reason that Arrington stated that he was willing to be bought out by AOL was: "I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software."
But that's hard to believe. CrunchBase isn’t bringing in any revenue (Creative Commons Attribution License) and I doubt it can be monetized. It brings little value for anyone who isn’t interested in angel-seed startup investing.
So, let’s look at Gawker’s analysis of the TechCrunch/AOL deal:
"Although the details of AOL's purchase agreement with TechCrunch have not been released, the consensus is that AOL used a three-year earnout designed to give Arrington and other TechCrunchers an incentive to stick around and do a great job. Based on various reports, we estimate that this earnout could likely amount to $10-$15 million above the original purchase price. $10-$15 million is a significant amount of money, even to Mike Arrington. We suspect, therefore, that even if Arrington gets bored or loathes working for AOL, he won't just quit because that would mean walking away from this cash.
If AOL management gets tired of Arrington's behavior, meanwhile, they presumably can't just fire him, because this would likely trigger a full payment of the earnout. To can Arrington and avoid paying the earnout, AOL would likely have to fire him 'for cause' And given that this behavior is par for Arrington's course, it would be hard to ...
I doubt he has to stoop so low as to speculate by hyping stock he owns. On the other hand, if he thinks some company is really cool, why shouldn't he allowed to invest in it? It's like if I discover a really cool new algorithm, why shouldn't I take advantage of it in my next project? It seems dumb to arbitrarily suppress knowledge.
I also doubt that in general the "insider trading" laws are very effective - I suppose if you play the stock market, you just have to take it into account somehow.
I'm sorry, but why does Le Kingmaker have so much trouble finding help? This sounds like a lie, but then again maybe he just doesn't pay very well for "talented" engineers. Sheesh, he's not running Booz Allen Hamilton, it's a CMS. A guy in Arrington's position has no excuse for these kinds of problems.
His going Palin means nothing to me and it sounds like he's on a narcissistic bender (for the past 3 years). If he flames out, so what? Some other Scoblite will come in and take his place just fine. Not sure what MG and some of the others would do without Arrington's ass-umbrella, though.
Hey, but you know, good for him for being a pain in AOL's ass. They've earned it. Maybe next time though he'll get acquired by a company that matters and his nutkicks will make a real difference. I guess now we have evidence that Techcrunch sold somewhere north of "fuck you money."
What did I say when the acquisition was announced? TC is going to become the TMZ of tech. I don't watch TMZ.