Mike Arrington Vents
Mike Arrington today vents some anger that must have been gnawing at him for a while. A number of posts pointing out the possible conflicts of interest for TechCrunch and Arrington in particular were getting too much to ignore for him and after he got a call from an Australian journalist looking for a cheapo hit-job, he just had to write this, I guess.
Arrington, of course, is founder and a major investor of edgeio, but he has also invested in a number of other start-ups and is very unapologetic about this.
Some people seem to think that I either need to shut down TechCrunch, or stop investing. Here’s my answer: No.
I don’t know about that – as the power and influence of TechCrunch is growing, the conflicts of interests will grow stronger as well. Not (only) because of the advertising – Arrington says that this is now handled by somebody besides him and completely seperate from the editorial content, which I am willing to believe, but I am sure he still knows who is advertising. But I think he is definitely misreading the situation when he says the following:
TechCrunch is different. TechCrunch is all about insider information and conflicts of interest. The only way I get access to the information I do is because these entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are my friends. I genuinely like these people and want them to succeed, and they know it and therefore trust me more than they trust traditional press.
That doesn’t ring right to me. TechCrunch could do a review on anything – no need to be friends with the VCs or founders. Maybe there would be less scoops, but at this point, TechCruch is big enough to get those anyway. Writing something like this just makes the blogosphere seem like a little mafia where you have to be friends with Mike Arringtoni to get things done.
I am an active investor, board member and advisory board member with a number of startups. That isn’t going to change. I also write about startups. That isn’t going to change, either. Obviously people like what we write on TechCrunch or they wouldn’t come back. But no one should think TechCrunch is objective or conflict-free. We aren’t. We never have been. We never will be.
Come on Mike, that’s too easy a way out. If you want people to take you serious, you can’t say something like that. You have to strive to be conflict-free. I like what TechCrunch writes, but once I realize that something (anything!) on the site was written and the conflict was not disclosed - that’s it. So you have to be extremely careful with what you write.
I don’t have the answer. For me, I just got rid of all the ads. I am not involved in any tech company (or any other company for that matter) and just write because I like it. If people read it – great. If not – my live will go on.
For TechCrunch, the ‘right’ thing to do would be simple: stop investing in startups. Let it be. Your brand is too important to get soiled by this and I am sure the TechCrunch brand with its spin-offs pays enough for you to make a living at this point.
And let’s be clear here: I don’t think disclosing financial interests is the end-all solution – not having them in the first place is the way to go. But that’s impossible for professional bloggers. You need advertising to survive. Even if you keep the advertising seperate from the editorial side of your business – you will still know who is advertising. That is a problem that magazines have done away with (they just write copy for advertisers these days), newspapers still struggle with and bloggers are only slowly getting to grips with as the money starts flowing into some blogging businesses.
Here are some other posts that talk about this:
Mathew Ingram – No Mike – TechCruch is not different
Tinfinger – The Asher Moses Debacle
The Technology Chronicles, Rational rants, Things That, Blogspotting, Business Logs, Bourland.com, ALLIED, ReveNews, The Blog Herald, J. LeRoy’s Evolving Web, digg and robhyndman.com