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AOL backed the fund. It's exactly as much of a disaster as it sounds.

• cookiecaper 15y ago
  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.
  • nknight 15y ago
    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.