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Am I the only one who sides with Arrington? I feel that TechCrunch has taken editorial ethics seriously so far, and see no reason why this shouldn't continue.

by mikek 15y ago

brown9-2 15y ago
I don't read TC regularly, but do they disclose when an article is written by someone who has a financial stake in the company being written about?
- brackin 15y ago
  I side with Arrington too, AOL didn't stick to their promise and Huff Post is hardly editorial brilliance. They don't pay most of their staff and a lot of their content is just SEO spam. I mean all of these editors of Engadget left, keeping quiet but many hinted about the editorial aspects inside of AOL as one of the reasons they'd resigned.
  - brackin 15y ago
    By the way, yes they do. Every post Arrington will say he or someone at TC is an investor. Not that it's too regular.
    - tatsuke95 15y ago
      Are you sure about this? "Every post" is a strong statement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mr. Arrington is an implicit investor in YC, through the Angel Fund, and Techcrunch gave the YC startups a ton of coverage lately. The few articles that I read in the early going made no reference to this fact.
      - brackin 15y ago
        YC startups have been given lots of press for years. You may be right, I don't know the specifics of the terms but YC startups have always had a lot of coverage because they're YC startups. I've seen far more bias from the mainstream press tech reporters towards certain startups. All these journalists seem to be hired by a number of startups. Seems like some are just reporting to help their career.
    - JabavuAdams 15y ago
      That's not good enough. That fact that it's accepted is a problem.
    - ig1 15y ago
      No they don't, and even if they wanted to they can't without it causing further problem (because of startups being in stealth, the disclosure itself giving favourable coverage to the startup). I wrote an article about it here: http://blog.imranghory.org/michael-arringtons-unsolvable-conflict-of-int http://blog.imranghory.org/michael-arringtons-unsolvable-con...
toddmorey 15y ago
Ethical track record aside, players and coaches don't get to officiate games; active investors don't get a free pass to be journalists in the same space. He KNEW he'd have to leave TechCrunch for the fund. The rest is just posturing.
- wanorris 15y ago
  Why? Om Malik is a partner in a venture firm[1] and still writes for GigaOm. You don't have to obtain a license or agree to uphold any particular code of conduct to be allowed to write about news for the web. You just write, and if people value what you have to say, they read. Arrington even had signoff from the CEO of AOL saying he could do both. That's not to say that Arrington is completely in the right in this. Many reasonable people seem to be worried about the conflict of interest, so there's a good chance that it's in AOL's interest to dispose of him to avoid worse PR. But I think he absolutely went into this thinking that he could keep doing TechCrunch. [1] http://www.trueventures.com/member/om-malik/ http://www.trueventures.com/member/om-malik/
- djcapelis 15y ago
  Funny that you should post that on a news site affiliated with an investment firm.
9999 15y ago
The capital J Journalist folks that MG Siegler referenced in his piece earlier have found TechCrunch's position on editorial ethics so laughable that it's almost hard to quantify the gulf between their expectations and the piddling concessions TechCrunch has offered over the years. I lived with a capital J journalist for a long time and got to know a lot of his coworkers and contacts, and I was really quite surprised at the lengths those people go to maintain their journalistic integrity. They would not simply disclose conflicts of interest, they would completely avoid them. For example, a lot of them would not even vote in elections or invest in funds that could even potentially contain stock in companies that they could even possibly cover in the future (regardless of whether or not they were even working in that field!). To the individuals that subscribe to that system, Arrington's position as an editor of a tremendously powerful tech news source and an investor in tech companies is absolutely irreconcilable. I think it's unfortunate that a lot of people really have little comprehension of what this so-called "capital J journalism" is about. In fact, it's pretty sad that someone in MG Siegler's position would even draw such a distinction. There is no such thing as capital J journalism. There's journalism, and then there's bullshit. edited: originally I referred to Siegler as MC Siegler
- cma 15y ago
  How does "not even vot[ing] in elections" in any way help with bias for a particular candidate? If you use a spin pulpit to shill for your desired candidate, how does not going out and voting for him too do anything to change that?
  - 9999 15y ago
    To be above all suspicion or reproach. The people I knew were pretty hardcore. That being said, they weren't all that intense. I'm sure some of them did vote, but they weren't running the campaign for one of the candidates in their off time, and if they were, they would have been fired immediately. As for spin pulpits, I'm not talking about opinion writing, I'm talking about reporting, which is ostensibly what TechCrunch does.
    - 15y ago

Am I the only one who sides with Arrington? I feel that TechCrunch has taken editorial ethics seriously so far, and see no reason why this shouldn't continue.

by mikek 15y ago

Am I the only one who sides with Arrington? I feel that TechCrunch has taken editorial ethics seriously so far, and see no reason why this shouldn't continue.

brown9-2 15y ago

I don't read TC regularly, but do they disclose when an article is written by someone who has a financial stake in the company being written about?

brackin 15y ago
I side with Arrington too, AOL didn't stick to their promise and Huff Post is hardly editorial brilliance. They don't pay most of their staff and a lot of their content is just SEO spam. I mean all of these editors of Engadget left, keeping quiet but many hinted about the editorial aspects inside of AOL as one of the reasons they'd resigned.
- brackin 15y ago
  By the way, yes they do. Every post Arrington will say he or someone at TC is an investor. Not that it's too regular.
  - tatsuke95 15y ago
    Are you sure about this? "Every post" is a strong statement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mr. Arrington is an implicit investor in YC, through the Angel Fund, and Techcrunch gave the YC startups a ton of coverage lately. The few articles that I read in the early going made no reference to this fact.
    - brackin 15y ago
      YC startups have been given lots of press for years. You may be right, I don't know the specifics of the terms but YC startups have always had a lot of coverage because they're YC startups. I've seen far more bias from the mainstream press tech reporters towards certain startups. All these journalists seem to be hired by a number of startups. Seems like some are just reporting to help their career.
  - JabavuAdams 15y ago
    That's not good enough. That fact that it's accepted is a problem.
  - ig1 15y ago
    No they don't, and even if they wanted to they can't without it causing further problem (because of startups being in stealth, the disclosure itself giving favourable coverage to the startup). I wrote an article about it here: http://blog.imranghory.org/michael-arringtons-unsolvable-conflict-of-int http://blog.imranghory.org/michael-arringtons-unsolvable-con...

toddmorey 15y ago

Ethical track record aside, players and coaches don't get to officiate games; active investors don't get a free pass to be journalists in the same space. He KNEW he'd have to leave TechCrunch for the fund. The rest is just posturing.

wanorris 15y ago
Why? Om Malik is a partner in a venture firm[1] and still writes for GigaOm. You don't have to obtain a license or agree to uphold any particular code of conduct to be allowed to write about news for the web. You just write, and if people value what you have to say, they read. Arrington even had signoff from the CEO of AOL saying he could do both. That's not to say that Arrington is completely in the right in this. Many reasonable people seem to be worried about the conflict of interest, so there's a good chance that it's in AOL's interest to dispose of him to avoid worse PR. But I think he absolutely went into this thinking that he could keep doing TechCrunch. [1] http://www.trueventures.com/member/om-malik/ http://www.trueventures.com/member/om-malik/
djcapelis 15y ago
Funny that you should post that on a news site affiliated with an investment firm.

9999 15y ago

The capital J Journalist folks that MG Siegler referenced in his piece earlier have found TechCrunch's position on editorial ethics so laughable that it's almost hard to quantify the gulf between their expectations and the piddling concessions TechCrunch has offered over the years. I lived with a capital J journalist for a long time and got to know a lot of his coworkers and contacts, and I was really quite surprised at the lengths those people go to maintain their journalistic integrity. They would not simply disclose conflicts of interest, they would completely avoid them. For example, a lot of them would not even vote in elections or invest in funds that could even potentially contain stock in companies that they could even possibly cover in the future (regardless of whether or not they were even working in that field!). To the individuals that subscribe to that system, Arrington's position as an editor of a tremendously powerful tech news source and an investor in tech companies is absolutely irreconcilable. I think it's unfortunate that a lot of people really have little comprehension of what this so-called "capital J journalism" is about. In fact, it's pretty sad that someone in MG Siegler's position would even draw such a distinction. There is no such thing as capital J journalism. There's journalism, and then there's bullshit. edited: originally I referred to Siegler as MC Siegler

cma 15y ago
How does "not even vot[ing] in elections" in any way help with bias for a particular candidate? If you use a spin pulpit to shill for your desired candidate, how does not going out and voting for him too do anything to change that?
- 9999 15y ago
  To be above all suspicion or reproach. The people I knew were pretty hardcore. That being said, they weren't all that intense. I'm sure some of them did vote, but they weren't running the campaign for one of the candidates in their off time, and if they were, they would have been fired immediately. As for spin pulpits, I'm not talking about opinion writing, I'm talking about reporting, which is ostensibly what TechCrunch does.
  - 15y ago