Don't make the mistake of confusing the word most with the word all when considering what happens in mergers and acquisitions. The application of natural selection to these situations is apt.
Consider both TechCrunch and The Huffington Post pre-sale to AOL. Which one would you have said made sense and which would you have said not-in-a-million-years? The TechCrunch acquisition was to literally buy credibility, whereas the Huffington Post purchase was to resource a strategy. Arianna Huffington makes AOL stronger in the traits that it has self-selected for. She's going to be just fine.
Arianna was the one who announced that Arrington would no longer be doing TechCrunch now that he was doing CrunchFund. The higher-ups at AOL were apparently on board with the plan for him to do both up until then.
I don't have any inside information, but one possible interpretation is that Arianna made this announcement to effectively force AOL to choose to either back her or back Arrington. They seem to have backed her, which has strengthened her control over the content engine that more or less drives the current AOL. With both Arrington and Topolsky gone (along with much of Topolsky's team), there's really not anyone there with the stature to challenge her in this area.
Honestly, it looks like she could be positioning herself to be the successor when Armstrong gets the boot for the current straits AOL finds itself in. Why leave the company when you can just run it?
You're not being entirely fair to AOL here: Arrington could have just said "no way" to the whole CrunchFund thing and posted a TechCrunch rant if it did go through. That would have made it much harder to sustain accusations of a conflict of interest (the critics are certainly less noisy about TechCrunch's coverage of AOL these days, although that's obviously a no-no according to classical journalist ethics.)
AOL is in no way perfect, but let's not place all the blame on them.
I think the fundamental issue is that the powers-that-be at AOL that helped bring the fund into existence wanted to do it IN ORDER TO leverage the TechCrunch name.
AOL didn't know that, and apparently either didn't care or wished for a conflict of interest.
Arrington knew there would be no conflict of interest from his own actions, but has stayed 'blind' to this conflict in approach from his major LP. For whatever reason, he went ahead with this plan, causing significant agitation at TC, and also indicating to the TC staff how much influence AOL has right now; on paper maybe not so much; with only a few 10s of millions of dollars, though, they can rule Michael's roost.
This isn't going to finish well, but I think we all knew that.
I'm personally of the opinion that there's a finite number of times that I'm willing to tolerate "histrionic linkbait" headlines.
From tech crunch and a number of other providers that find themselves in the top spot on HN I've personally stopped logging through to the actual article until I've at least read a few comments.
Does the discussion warrant my heading through to the full source? Usually, no.
I know that from the general success of these pages and places like Fox News, there seems to be a near-enough-bottomless appetite for histrionic linkbait in the news, so I'm pretty sure it's never going to go away.
Part of me however wonders if there is any correlation between those posts we see from time to time entitled "I'm leaving Hackernews forever" or "Hacker News has gone downhill" and the number of high-drama BS posts that make it onto the front page over a particular timespan. Maybe it's just cumulative over time, you eventually have your "fill" and leave.
I guess I'm kinda just rambling a bit... but it seems to me that TC puts out a lot of noise. Was "angelgate" pre-AOL ? Maybe it's always been that way.
I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about the internal structure of TechCrunch in particular (and AOL's web properties more generally) but this article strikes me as being enormously counter-productive.
What benefit is there in airing all your dirty laundry like this? Publicly 'shaming' AOL into backing down?
I suppose you could argue the benefit of keeping it private is that it doesn't let their readers see all the personal drama and histrionics that could impinge their editorial/journalistic credibility e.g. it's their job to report tech news, not to be a platform to communicate their personal feelings about internal office politics.
I get the feeling that this article is precisely as a result of the 'new media' model of content production at sites like TechCrunch. The author rightly lauds this models dynamism and agility in the article on his personal site (that was linked in the article) but do you think something like this, that's so close to verging on unprofessional, would happen at a more conventional publication? Because I certainly don't.
Read the article, AOL already destroyed any sense of journalistic credibility. Right now they're just trying to get their side of the story out before AOL officially responds to its own f-up by shooting the messengers.
I agree, this wouldn't happen at a more conventional publication.
Open questions: Will this sort of thing become the new normal, as blogs become more mainstream and legacy publications take on some of their attributes? And would it be an improvement if it did?
Yes, TechCrunch should be about tech news and not about their office politics. But does publishing it disproportionately harm their credibility, or does not publishing it give them credibility they don't deserve? c.f. phone hacking by UK newspapers.
The entire point of Siegler's/Carr's description of TechCrunch is that the writers publish their own work. Despite all the fancy(?) trappings, Tech Crunch is actually one big joint blog.
I wonder if anyone at AOL even _knows_ how to delete a post from TechCrunch. I guess they could always ask mike to yank that posting... :-)
Too late, it's on the internet. They're not going to delete it because then instead of the title of this story being "TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over" it would instead be "The Article AOL Pulled From TechCrunch: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over". The first rule of getting yourself out of a hole is to stop digging.
This one is different in the sense that this time the drama over at TechCrunch is actually about TechCrunch itself.
Not to sound silly, but contrast this to the usual techcrunch drama (and drama is overly normal over there): Techcrunch being upset that last.fm is calling them full of shit because Techcrunch had some sensationalistic news about last.fm which last.fm was not willing to confirm or deny within 10 minutes and so they went live with the story, unconfirmed, because that is what cutting edge journalism is, because people deserve to know what may or may not be there. Sort of. Wait. Why do people hate us all of a sudden?
That sort of drama. Demeaning to the mind and going at a constant rate over at techcrunch.com.
So... This is still techcrunch and it is still drama, but at least this time (maybe for the last time?) it's different. Feels refreshing, doesn't it?
The title subtly implies TechCrunch may be over, but really it only says TechCrunch will change because of the "As We Know It" clause. You are losing a editor-in-chief, things will change, duh?
Can someone tl;dr on this whole situation? I read the linked article but it doesn't provide a lot of background (basically, just takes a long time to say, "We will be seriously bummed if AOL fires Mike Arrington") on the situation. Why is AOL considering canning Arrington? The article says he said or did something they didn't like; what is that thing?
He’s starting an investment portfolio called CrunchFund. The worry is that TC will write stuff that is pro-"CrunchFunded" companies and slam their competitors.
That sounds like there is a good chance that this was a malicious action, "how can we get rid of Arrington without making everyone hate us?" I have a hard time believing that they set the whole fund up, went through all the motions, and only after Mike publicly announced it did they say, "Oh, maybe there's a conflict of interest here..."
It was probably concocted with the intent to remove Mike Arrington, replace him with AOL's own suit that can squeeze more money out of TC, and look like a white knight while doing so, improving the reputation of AOL's "journalism" properties (which are the only significant part of AOL left, really).
I understand this is a violation of Hanlon's Razor, the incompetence seems a bit far-fetched for me. I would expect at least someone in the company saw this coming.
Well, first, I think plenty of people already hate AOL. Second, it was AOL's CEO that explicitly disclaimed journalistic ethics, not Arrington or anybody at TechCrunch.
Finally, Arrington is good at this, AOL never has been. No rationale person intentionally picks a public fight with Arrington. If this was intentional on AOL's part, it backfired badly, and is still attributable to stupidity.
For what I can tell AOL were quite happy with it when it wasn't widely reported (or they were to thick to notice it, or the board just OKed its investment into the fund without any due diligence checks at all - lack of due diligence being the most likely explanation as generally ignorance trumps stupidity and stupidity trumps malice).
They backtracked when other outlets got hold of the story and started talking about it. The people being back-tracked on, and their friends & partners, are not happy. As a result several prams now contain less toys than they once did.
AOL is a big org, and different sections have different needs.
The business guys think the conflict of interest is a selling point - take CrunchFund money, or risk TC slamming your business! The people in AOL management who actually care about journalistic integrity (both of them?) think it's bad.
It seems the compromise position is to move Mike (the guy who upholds TC's integrity) off TC, so there's no conflict of interest, and move some corporate guy in there to keep things honest.
i always like it when people paint a big "fire me now"-sign on their forehead. it's bold, it's cool and he will find another job anyway (or maybe start a startup instead of just bitching about them)
You can almost see this as testing the limits of the post-Arrington TechCrunch.
If the post is taken down, it will be re-blogged by every other tech pundit from Gruber to Dvorak (hello, Streisand effect.)
If AOL repremands MG Siegler, then everyone will know what happened. Either he'll do another post, or he'll blog about in on his personal blog and it will take off through the bloggeratti. If he's forced into silence, then it will leak out through friends and colleagues.
If AOL ignores it and does what it wants, then the writers at TechCrunch will at least know what they can get away with. It's the Mindsweeper's Dilemma, you can't make any progress among uncertainty unless you take the first step.
MG Siegler probably thought (correctly, I think) that he's not at risk of getting fired and the uncertainty is killing morale.
If he is fired, he knows some other tech blog will snatch him up.
So, it may indeed seem unprofessional, but I give him a lot of credit in trying to "manage up."
There's always the option they expected this reaction and figured they would let him blow off the steam in a few articles and then move on.
In a few months, everybody is going to forget about this whole the episode anyway. Firing him or giving him more ammunition is exactly what they don't want to do.
I do not like it this time, because it is obvious that he is throwing a hissy fit because it does not look like he is going to be the one appointed to fill Arrington's shoes.
In a way I think that's the point. Siegler is so out of control at this point that he does the one thing TC has always done: if you can't figure it out, light a bomb under it and see what falls off.
Will it still be the old TC? Is this just about Arrington or is it AOL finally digging its heels in and trying to tame the beast? Or are there some kind of dark machinations behind the scenes that nobody's talking about?
The easy way to answer all of it is by writing something that nobody can ignore. AOL's reaction will show their hand. If they torpedo the article, that's that, If they ask Arrington to use his big swinging editor title for real to kill it then that's that. If they let it sit, then they're willing to let their own property hold them to the fire with the entire valley looking on. Either way, hand-wavy secret shadow dealings are out the window.
TechCrunch reports the news. TechCrunch makes the news. It was ever thus.
I can believe it. I expect the sacking was decided at least some days ago. This smacks of trying to stir up some trouble on the way out when you are sure you are going to be pushed but haven't been officially told to go yet.
As a side note (and a snide note), I do find it really quite sweet that in a couple of the pages linked to by the current article they seem to believe TechCrunch has something to do with the concept of professional journalism.
Hmm, was just reading "Good to Great" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great) about leadership, simplicity and doing what you're good at. Something tells me TechCrunch is not a great company if things are going to collapse this way without Arrington...
Oh, and something tells me little oversight for your writers leads to massive internal communication issues like these...
You took a shortcut. I don't think that TC wouldn't work without Arrington, and i don't think it is what Siegler wants to tell us. The problem is not that Arrington is leaving, the problem is that he will be replaced, and not likely by someone that will follow Arrington's way of leading TC. More like pleasing AOL.
I'm not particular fan of Arrington, but I do think TechCrunch has shown with all its negative AOL postings is that it's not beholden to the hand that feeds it.
You kind of jump all over the place with your points.
1. professionalism. Yes, they don't exhibit professionalism in the traditional sense. they don't mind airing dirty laundry and posting personal rant posts.
2. Then you get into the question of bias. I think it's clear that they don't pander or hold punches with respect to AOL, their parent company. The whole point of the rants over the past few days has been the fact that these are independent writers who don't feel any particular loyalty to this unaffiliated crunchfund. And they don't like the implications they do.
I started reading TechCrunch again yesterday because I heard Arrington would be fired. I don't like Arrington.
When I think of TC, I usually think of the CrunchPad drama, Mike's sexist comments, Mike complaining about the Google kid standing in front of his car and the CrunchFund conflict of interest.
There are other startup sites that don't have the same arrogance.
Agreed. I'd suggest this irreverent style is cultivated/encouraged by Arrington. Would this have been posted under a more traditional editor's watch? I doubt it.
The notion that Mike, or anyone else, investing in a company would dictate some sort of giant conflicted agenda is laughable. Literally. If Mike tried to get me to write some unreasonable post about a company he had invested in, I would laugh at him. But he would never do that.
No, what's laughable is expecting your readership to rely on your characterisation of your relationship with your editor as a guide to the editorial standards of your publication.
The magic at TechCrunch happens because the writers have very little oversight. Instead, the emphasis is placed on hiring the right writers in the first place
Indeed.
Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site.
As readers we have a robust yardstick for presuming bias in reporting: financial interest in the subject. It's important that we do have one and writers who claim otherwise should know that they're demanding a serious indulgence. In contrast to Siegler's tantrum: hxxp://allthingsd.com/author/kara/#kara-ethics
Edit: Strange, the 'ethics statement' content block has to be revealed by manual click. The link is in the article tools menu at the top of the page, in faint text.
Edit: Thought this excerpt was interesting (from the article above)
"Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however confidential, except those he invests in."
There is a small "Ethics Statement" link at right, across from her name and next to the Email/RSS links. It's a little too long to post here, but certainly worth reading.
In other news, #links are bad for usability. Who knew?
I had just finished reading your post from the link further down and I agree with its content. This is not a new problem for journalism. The solution is to leave all that lovely money on the table and keep your reputation intact, or change career.
From Walt Mossberg's version of the link I posted above:
I don’t own a single share of stock in any of the companies whose products I cover, or any shares in technology-oriented mutual funds. Because of this, I completely missed the giant run-up in tech stocks a few years back, and looked like an idiot. However, when the tech stocks crashed, I looked like a genius. Neither was true.
Note also that the first and third quotes are mutually exclusive. Mike's influence permeates the site, but the writers would laugh at him if he tried to influence them? Which is it?
I've never reviewed any journal contracts before, but wouldn't there be some clause that forbids publishing content that intentionally damages the publisher's brand? If so couldn't TechCrunch sue the author here?
Am I the only one who sees the victimization going on here? MG says "AOL promised not to interfere" and yet now "they may break their promise to us". Meanwhile Michael went and created an investment fund that clearly conflicts with TechCrunch interests.
I think AOL tried to have it both ways. With mainstream media revealing the distasteful arrangement, however, AOL has to protect their bigger interest: publishing.
In otherwords: something might happen tomorrow, and it might involve the ouster of Arrington from TechCrunch. But we don't know, and no one is telling us. But we like poking bee hives, so we're going to publish this rant anyway...
But we don't know, and no one is telling us. But we like poking bee hives, so we're going to publish this rant anyway...
You cannot possibly say that this doesn't sound like how things are always done at techcrunch. Write first, cause drama, then cause more drama by publishing stories about why you cannot fathom that people has an issue about your way of publishing stories and your unclear communication. Then repeat.
I've long stopped paying attention to the site at all, but I had to check this one out. Hopefully TC will vanish and the internet will gain something better.
Kudos for being so open. I was always impressed how open and truth commited these guys actually are. And like most people I love that.
But I also think this article reads a little naive. Probably AOL has other plans for the future. Probably since before they acquired Tech Crunch. All that is and never was about the community or the company. Maybe they wanted to buy the talent Arrington. Maybe they just wanted to shut them up. But I think activating the community now will not help at all. If they are together in a VC fund with Arrington they maybe bought him off to help him let TC die. It's exactly what I would do, if I wanted to kill them (and if I would have the money, of course). First buy the company, make Arrington more rich. Tell everybody nothing changes. Wait until everybody calmed down. Then try to motivate Arrington to do something else and give him some more cash to do it. Then wait a little more. Then turn off the lights and close the doors.
edit I see someone disagreed with that. Why not argue instead of downvote? I really would appreciate your opinion. (Leave the downvote, that doesn't matter. I only want your thoughts!)
I generally like Siegler's stuff but he's so far down the rabbit hole now he can't see the reasoning behind concepts like 'bias' and 'disclosure.' Worse, he seems to be fully believe these things don't, or shouldn't, apply because he works in "new media."
It concerns me that a so-called bastion of tech reporting aspires to have all the ethics of TMZ or your friendly neighborhood penny stock newsletter pump and dump scam.
113 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadConsider both TechCrunch and The Huffington Post pre-sale to AOL. Which one would you have said made sense and which would you have said not-in-a-million-years? The TechCrunch acquisition was to literally buy credibility, whereas the Huffington Post purchase was to resource a strategy. Arianna Huffington makes AOL stronger in the traits that it has self-selected for. She's going to be just fine.
I don't have any inside information, but one possible interpretation is that Arianna made this announcement to effectively force AOL to choose to either back her or back Arrington. They seem to have backed her, which has strengthened her control over the content engine that more or less drives the current AOL. With both Arrington and Topolsky gone (along with much of Topolsky's team), there's really not anyone there with the stature to challenge her in this area.
Honestly, it looks like she could be positioning herself to be the successor when Armstrong gets the boot for the current straits AOL finds itself in. Why leave the company when you can just run it?
Edit: Huffington clarifying Arrington's (non-)role: http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-arrington-no-longer-work...
AOL is in no way perfect, but let's not place all the blame on them.
AOL didn't know that, and apparently either didn't care or wished for a conflict of interest.
Arrington knew there would be no conflict of interest from his own actions, but has stayed 'blind' to this conflict in approach from his major LP. For whatever reason, he went ahead with this plan, causing significant agitation at TC, and also indicating to the TC staff how much influence AOL has right now; on paper maybe not so much; with only a few 10s of millions of dollars, though, they can rule Michael's roost.
This isn't going to finish well, but I think we all knew that.
From tech crunch and a number of other providers that find themselves in the top spot on HN I've personally stopped logging through to the actual article until I've at least read a few comments.
Does the discussion warrant my heading through to the full source? Usually, no.
I know that from the general success of these pages and places like Fox News, there seems to be a near-enough-bottomless appetite for histrionic linkbait in the news, so I'm pretty sure it's never going to go away.
Part of me however wonders if there is any correlation between those posts we see from time to time entitled "I'm leaving Hackernews forever" or "Hacker News has gone downhill" and the number of high-drama BS posts that make it onto the front page over a particular timespan. Maybe it's just cumulative over time, you eventually have your "fill" and leave.
I guess I'm kinda just rambling a bit... but it seems to me that TC puts out a lot of noise. Was "angelgate" pre-AOL ? Maybe it's always been that way.
What benefit is there in airing all your dirty laundry like this? Publicly 'shaming' AOL into backing down?
What benefit is there to keeping it all secret?
I get the feeling that this article is precisely as a result of the 'new media' model of content production at sites like TechCrunch. The author rightly lauds this models dynamism and agility in the article on his personal site (that was linked in the article) but do you think something like this, that's so close to verging on unprofessional, would happen at a more conventional publication? Because I certainly don't.
Open questions: Will this sort of thing become the new normal, as blogs become more mainstream and legacy publications take on some of their attributes? And would it be an improvement if it did?
Yes, TechCrunch should be about tech news and not about their office politics. But does publishing it disproportionately harm their credibility, or does not publishing it give them credibility they don't deserve? c.f. phone hacking by UK newspapers.
I wonder if anyone at AOL even _knows_ how to delete a post from TechCrunch. I guess they could always ask mike to yank that posting... :-)
Nope, still dramatic and hyperbolic as ever!
Not to sound silly, but contrast this to the usual techcrunch drama (and drama is overly normal over there): Techcrunch being upset that last.fm is calling them full of shit because Techcrunch had some sensationalistic news about last.fm which last.fm was not willing to confirm or deny within 10 minutes and so they went live with the story, unconfirmed, because that is what cutting edge journalism is, because people deserve to know what may or may not be there. Sort of. Wait. Why do people hate us all of a sudden?
That sort of drama. Demeaning to the mind and going at a constant rate over at techcrunch.com.
So... This is still techcrunch and it is still drama, but at least this time (maybe for the last time?) it's different. Feels refreshing, doesn't it?
The title subtly implies TechCrunch may be over, but really it only says TechCrunch will change because of the "As We Know It" clause. You are losing a editor-in-chief, things will change, duh?
It's exactly as much of a disaster as it sounds.
It was probably concocted with the intent to remove Mike Arrington, replace him with AOL's own suit that can squeeze more money out of TC, and look like a white knight while doing so, improving the reputation of AOL's "journalism" properties (which are the only significant part of AOL left, really).
I understand this is a violation of Hanlon's Razor, the incompetence seems a bit far-fetched for me. I would expect at least someone in the company saw this coming.
Finally, Arrington is good at this, AOL never has been. No rationale person intentionally picks a public fight with Arrington. If this was intentional on AOL's part, it backfired badly, and is still attributable to stupidity.
They backtracked when other outlets got hold of the story and started talking about it. The people being back-tracked on, and their friends & partners, are not happy. As a result several prams now contain less toys than they once did.
The business guys think the conflict of interest is a selling point - take CrunchFund money, or risk TC slamming your business! The people in AOL management who actually care about journalistic integrity (both of them?) think it's bad.
It seems the compromise position is to move Mike (the guy who upholds TC's integrity) off TC, so there's no conflict of interest, and move some corporate guy in there to keep things honest.
"If AOL tries to bing in their own Editor-in-Chief to run TechCrunch, it will be a colossal fucking mistake."
I can't believe that rant went live. Somebody is getting fired.
If the post is taken down, it will be re-blogged by every other tech pundit from Gruber to Dvorak (hello, Streisand effect.)
If AOL repremands MG Siegler, then everyone will know what happened. Either he'll do another post, or he'll blog about in on his personal blog and it will take off through the bloggeratti. If he's forced into silence, then it will leak out through friends and colleagues.
If AOL ignores it and does what it wants, then the writers at TechCrunch will at least know what they can get away with. It's the Mindsweeper's Dilemma, you can't make any progress among uncertainty unless you take the first step.
MG Siegler probably thought (correctly, I think) that he's not at risk of getting fired and the uncertainty is killing morale.
If he is fired, he knows some other tech blog will snatch him up.
So, it may indeed seem unprofessional, but I give him a lot of credit in trying to "manage up."
In a few months, everybody is going to forget about this whole the episode anyway. Firing him or giving him more ammunition is exactly what they don't want to do.
Will it still be the old TC? Is this just about Arrington or is it AOL finally digging its heels in and trying to tame the beast? Or are there some kind of dark machinations behind the scenes that nobody's talking about?
The easy way to answer all of it is by writing something that nobody can ignore. AOL's reaction will show their hand. If they torpedo the article, that's that, If they ask Arrington to use his big swinging editor title for real to kill it then that's that. If they let it sit, then they're willing to let their own property hold them to the fire with the entire valley looking on. Either way, hand-wavy secret shadow dealings are out the window.
TechCrunch reports the news. TechCrunch makes the news. It was ever thus.
As a side note (and a snide note), I do find it really quite sweet that in a couple of the pages linked to by the current article they seem to believe TechCrunch has something to do with the concept of professional journalism.
Oh, and something tells me little oversight for your writers leads to massive internal communication issues like these...
You kind of jump all over the place with your points.
1. professionalism. Yes, they don't exhibit professionalism in the traditional sense. they don't mind airing dirty laundry and posting personal rant posts.
2. Then you get into the question of bias. I think it's clear that they don't pander or hold punches with respect to AOL, their parent company. The whole point of the rants over the past few days has been the fact that these are independent writers who don't feel any particular loyalty to this unaffiliated crunchfund. And they don't like the implications they do.
When I think of TC, I usually think of the CrunchPad drama, Mike's sexist comments, Mike complaining about the Google kid standing in front of his car and the CrunchFund conflict of interest.
There are other startup sites that don't have the same arrogance.
> Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site.
Which is it?
(real startup stories) vs (product reviews/facebook news) over time
That's where you'll find the problem, I have a feeling it will be sloping in a certain direction.
No, what's laughable is expecting your readership to rely on your characterisation of your relationship with your editor as a guide to the editorial standards of your publication.
The magic at TechCrunch happens because the writers have very little oversight. Instead, the emphasis is placed on hiring the right writers in the first place
Indeed.
Quite often, you never even see what he brings. But it permeates the entire site.
As readers we have a robust yardstick for presuming bias in reporting: financial interest in the subject. It's important that we do have one and writers who claim otherwise should know that they're demanding a serious indulgence. In contrast to Siegler's tantrum: hxxp://allthingsd.com/author/kara/#kara-ethics
Edit: Strange, the 'ethics statement' content block has to be revealed by manual click. The link is in the article tools menu at the top of the page, in faint text.
Edit2: Traced the content from the AJAX loader to here: http://allthingsd.com/index.php?atd_ajax=authorinfo&fiel...
http://allthingsd.com/20110902/crunchfund-unethical-ventures...
Edit: Thought this excerpt was interesting (from the article above)
"Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however confidential, except those he invests in."
In other news, #links are bad for usability. Who knew?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fragment_iden...
Having named anchors so people can link to specific sections is good. Having some javascript mess around with storing state in them, not so much.
I wrote up an article about them prior to Arrington's resignation:
http://blog.imranghory.org/michael-arringtons-unsolvable-con...
From Walt Mossberg's version of the link I posted above:
I don’t own a single share of stock in any of the companies whose products I cover, or any shares in technology-oriented mutual funds. Because of this, I completely missed the giant run-up in tech stocks a few years back, and looked like an idiot. However, when the tech stocks crashed, I looked like a genius. Neither was true.
-- http://allthingsd.com/index.php?atd_ajax=authorinfo&fiel...
Obviously, those who adhere to this principle are not saints. It just goes with the job.
I think AOL tried to have it both ways. With mainstream media revealing the distasteful arrangement, however, AOL has to protect their bigger interest: publishing.
Between this and the Carr post from a few days ago (http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/crunchfund/), they really do seem totally out of control over there... which is far worse.
You cannot possibly say that this doesn't sound like how things are always done at techcrunch. Write first, cause drama, then cause more drama by publishing stories about why you cannot fathom that people has an issue about your way of publishing stories and your unclear communication. Then repeat.
I've long stopped paying attention to the site at all, but I had to check this one out. Hopefully TC will vanish and the internet will gain something better.
But I also think this article reads a little naive. Probably AOL has other plans for the future. Probably since before they acquired Tech Crunch. All that is and never was about the community or the company. Maybe they wanted to buy the talent Arrington. Maybe they just wanted to shut them up. But I think activating the community now will not help at all. If they are together in a VC fund with Arrington they maybe bought him off to help him let TC die. It's exactly what I would do, if I wanted to kill them (and if I would have the money, of course). First buy the company, make Arrington more rich. Tell everybody nothing changes. Wait until everybody calmed down. Then try to motivate Arrington to do something else and give him some more cash to do it. Then wait a little more. Then turn off the lights and close the doors.
edit I see someone disagreed with that. Why not argue instead of downvote? I really would appreciate your opinion. (Leave the downvote, that doesn't matter. I only want your thoughts!)
It concerns me that a so-called bastion of tech reporting aspires to have all the ethics of TMZ or your friendly neighborhood penny stock newsletter pump and dump scam.
Is there any evidence that TechCrunch _hasn't_ done necessary disclosure?