7 ms·

Arrington's Back

40 points by bkrausz 18y ago

krav 18y ago
Oh goody. The web was crashing without him.
- nir 18y ago
  Don't worry, it's being rebooted now: http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-rebooted-the-web-yesterday/ http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-rebooted-the-web-...
metatronscube 18y ago
who the hell cares?!
- pg 18y ago
  I do.
  - jodrellblank 18y ago
    Why? TechCrunch - it's like choosing to read adverts. Is your caring about TechCrunch more about the y-Combinator startups it plugs, the general state of news-blogging or interest in the content?
    - rms 18y ago
      They cover internet startup news, people. It's about as on topic here as it can get. There's a lowest common denominator aspect to their coverage, but all of this anger is not justified.
    - pg 18y ago
      Whether or not you like it, TC is the "paper of record" for startups. Most of the new startups I hear about, I hear about there first. But the reason I said that I cared is that I worry about Michael personally. The new kind of journalism people like him and Om Malik have been evolving is very stressful. They end up being constantly plugged in. It's alarming to watch
      - tdavis 18y ago
        For as much as I dislike TC in general, I can't help but feel a little sorry for Michael... the man looks like he's aged 20 years since he started TC and I think that "constantly plugged in" thing is a big part of it.
      - 9oliYQjP 18y ago
        They have "evolved" a style of "journalism" that involves blind repetition of speculative, often unverified, information. It's like they are playing a game of broken telephone, but with a megaphone in hand. They have to be constantly plugged in because -- guess what -- that is the only value that they offer; the ability to be first at all costs. There are some things that I'll be a little bit patient about. Cooking my hamburger? You know what, take your time, make sure it's cooked thoroughly. Putting down a concrete foundation for me? By all means, let it cure and set so I don't have to put up with cracks in a few years. I don't have time to be plugged in 24/7 to hear about the latest startups. But I do enjoy reading about them. So, I'd personally rather read about a story once, and have the information be accurate and thorough rather than be the first to hear about a story but be misinformed. As I approach my thirties, I remember a funny story an older guy shared with me when I was in my early twenties. There's an old bull and a younger bull walking up a hill. When they get to the top, they look down and see a whole field of female cattle. The younger bull, excited, turns to the older bull and says "I'm going to run down there and have my way with one of them!". The older bull chuckles dismissively and replies, "Okay, well I'm going to walk down there and have my way with all of them!" Do things correctly. I'm of the opinion -- I fully understand it is simply an opinion -- that the way TC does things is incorrect. I wish they would adopt a style of investigative journalism that held to the profession's ideals a bit more. In fact, I wish more of the mainstream media would do the same these days.
        pg 18y ago
        They have "evolved" a style of "journalism" that involves blind repetition of speculative, often unverified, information. A fine, ringing denunciation. But let's consider performance. Do you learn more about startups from TechCrunch or the New York Times? I learn much more from TechCrunch. By the time the NYT gets around to writing about a startup, the news is usually pretty old. And they often get the story wrong, despite their supposedly greater professionalism, because they don't understand the domain as well as TC's writers do. If you think there's a better source of information about startups than TechCrunch, what is it?
  - jeremymims 18y ago
    I do too. Michael isn't just any old tech journalist (although that would be fine). He's a startup founder. Tech Crunch covered startups when it wasn't popular and showed founders around the world that we weren't operating in a vacuum (all before he knew if there would ever be any money in it). The fact is he has worked his ass off writing about our industry and advocating on behalf of startups the past few years. He's not just writing about us. He's one of us. Michael doesn't just deserve our respect, he deserves our gratitude. Thanks Michael and welcome back!
  - wschroter 18y ago
    I think it's a travesty that he was beaten down so bad by the negativity that he had to leave in the first place. This wasn't a vacation, it was a retreat - for the wrong reasons.
- nlanier 18y ago
  Obviously quite a few people, especially on Hacker News. Mr. Arrington is clearly a polarizing figure and if you wish to see him marginalized I would advise you to refrain from posting comments such as this one - It only fuels the fire.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
RossM 18y ago
This came off to me as a boastful post, showing off that he can afford holidays in these credit-crunchy times. Is this just me or am I being grumpy again?
- pg 18y ago
  I'm sure he'd be astonished to find that anyone thought that. It's an interesting data point about what a minefield it is to be a public figure though. People get offended by the stuff you write, so you go off and stop writing for a month, and then they're offended that you were able to go on vacation for so long.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    You just have to deal with it. People _will_ get offended. Being several (quite a lot of) orders of magnitude less influential than TC (and you), I try hard not to deal with it. I will invariably offend a more or less constant portion of my readership every article I write. I try to be as fair and as truthful as I can and, if that offends, say, 10% of my readers, so be it. There is nothing more I could do without compromising my own integrity. And that is far more important than how many people I may offend.
  - crescendo 18y ago
    I'm not offended by the fact that he went on a long vacation, or even that he wrote an article about it. What bugs me is that somehow it's front-page news. This article has zero content.
    - pg 18y ago
      The news is not the part about where he stayed; it's that he's back on the job.
    - Andys 18y ago
      The information about the Hanalei Surfboard House was the most interesting thing I've ever gotten out of TechCruch for years.
- 18y ago
axod 18y ago
It'll be interesting to see if he addresses things like the last.fm story, and how things really went without him. Good he's back, I think the quality of TC dropped there...
wheels 18y ago
This already got killed once: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499909 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499909
time_management 18y ago
He said something about being fully booked, but I offered to pay more than his usual rate and said I’d plug Surfboard House on TechCrunch (consider that a disclosure). He had (and still has) no idea what TechCrunch is, but the dollars did the trick. Schedules were juggled, I stayed. I take "schedules were juggled" to indicate that other patrons were bumped, which would make MA a world-class shithead.
- pclark 18y ago
  why? would that make him a shithead? Surely it'd make the hotel a "shithead" or something? The visitor that got bumped probably got a discount if he comes back in a week or two, or something.
  - time_management 18y ago
    You make a good point, which is that there might have been a discount offered or some other incentive, and the rescheduling might have been entirely voluntary on the part of the patrons. I'm not going to pass final judgment, since I clearly don't know the full story. My observation is that many hotels aren't so kind about this sort of thing. I was once on the receiving end (sort of) of a similar situation, in Juneau, AK. It's a small city with a short tourism window, so it tends to be packed in the summer. Some rich piece of shit called up one of the major hotels and asked for half of it so he could throw a party. Patrons were booted, regardless of reservations. I wasn't in that hotel, so I wasn't directly booted, but it affected the entire city, because it was impossible to get a hotel due to all the displaced people. My girlfriend and I ended up staying in a "historic" ex-brothel hotel in a room right over a nightclub.
gcheong 18y ago
Now I know where I might want to stay if I ever go to Hawaii. Thanks for posting this.
mhb 18y ago
Hairy?
- olifante 18y ago
  Pain?
mccon104 18y ago
wow i have to say i'm a little astonished at the emotional (and largely negative) responses from people to Arrington simply announcing to his readers that he is back. he wasn't trying to start a flame war. he simply let his readers know what he had done during his hiatus. and yes this is noteworthy for the startup community. when the largest start-up related blogger (like it or not) comes back after being a month out of the game (7 months in newspaper years), it's kinda a big deal. how is a "who the hell cares?!" comment worthy of 65 upvotes? it doesn't even pass the first 2 words in the comment guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Arrington's Back

40 points by bkrausz 18y ago

krav 18y ago

Oh goody. The web was crashing without him.

nir 18y ago
Don't worry, it's being rebooted now: http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-rebooted-the-web-yesterday/ http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-rebooted-the-web-...

metatronscube 18y ago

who the hell cares?!

pg 18y ago
I do.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  Why? TechCrunch - it's like choosing to read adverts. Is your caring about TechCrunch more about the y-Combinator startups it plugs, the general state of news-blogging or interest in the content?
  - rms 18y ago
    They cover internet startup news, people. It's about as on topic here as it can get. There's a lowest common denominator aspect to their coverage, but all of this anger is not justified.
  - pg 18y ago
    Whether or not you like it, TC is the "paper of record" for startups. Most of the new startups I hear about, I hear about there first. But the reason I said that I cared is that I worry about Michael personally. The new kind of journalism people like him and Om Malik have been evolving is very stressful. They end up being constantly plugged in. It's alarming to watch
    - tdavis 18y ago
      For as much as I dislike TC in general, I can't help but feel a little sorry for Michael... the man looks like he's aged 20 years since he started TC and I think that "constantly plugged in" thing is a big part of it.
    - 9oliYQjP 18y ago
      They have "evolved" a style of "journalism" that involves blind repetition of speculative, often unverified, information. It's like they are playing a game of broken telephone, but with a megaphone in hand. They have to be constantly plugged in because -- guess what -- that is the only value that they offer; the ability to be first at all costs. There are some things that I'll be a little bit patient about. Cooking my hamburger? You know what, take your time, make sure it's cooked thoroughly. Putting down a concrete foundation for me? By all means, let it cure and set so I don't have to put up with cracks in a few years. I don't have time to be plugged in 24/7 to hear about the latest startups. But I do enjoy reading about them. So, I'd personally rather read about a story once, and have the information be accurate and thorough rather than be the first to hear about a story but be misinformed. As I approach my thirties, I remember a funny story an older guy shared with me when I was in my early twenties. There's an old bull and a younger bull walking up a hill. When they get to the top, they look down and see a whole field of female cattle. The younger bull, excited, turns to the older bull and says "I'm going to run down there and have my way with one of them!". The older bull chuckles dismissively and replies, "Okay, well I'm going to walk down there and have my way with all of them!" Do things correctly. I'm of the opinion -- I fully understand it is simply an opinion -- that the way TC does things is incorrect. I wish they would adopt a style of investigative journalism that held to the profession's ideals a bit more. In fact, I wish more of the mainstream media would do the same these days.
      - pg 18y ago
        They have "evolved" a style of "journalism" that involves blind repetition of speculative, often unverified, information. A fine, ringing denunciation. But let's consider performance. Do you learn more about startups from TechCrunch or the New York Times? I learn much more from TechCrunch. By the time the NYT gets around to writing about a startup, the news is usually pretty old. And they often get the story wrong, despite their supposedly greater professionalism, because they don't understand the domain as well as TC's writers do. If you think there's a better source of information about startups than TechCrunch, what is it?
- jeremymims 18y ago
  I do too. Michael isn't just any old tech journalist (although that would be fine). He's a startup founder. Tech Crunch covered startups when it wasn't popular and showed founders around the world that we weren't operating in a vacuum (all before he knew if there would ever be any money in it). The fact is he has worked his ass off writing about our industry and advocating on behalf of startups the past few years. He's not just writing about us. He's one of us. Michael doesn't just deserve our respect, he deserves our gratitude. Thanks Michael and welcome back!
- wschroter 18y ago
  I think it's a travesty that he was beaten down so bad by the negativity that he had to leave in the first place. This wasn't a vacation, it was a retreat - for the wrong reasons.
nlanier 18y ago
Obviously quite a few people, especially on Hacker News. Mr. Arrington is clearly a polarizing figure and if you wish to see him marginalized I would advise you to refrain from posting comments such as this one - It only fuels the fire.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

RossM 18y ago

This came off to me as a boastful post, showing off that he can afford holidays in these credit-crunchy times. Is this just me or am I being grumpy again?

pg 18y ago
I'm sure he'd be astonished to find that anyone thought that. It's an interesting data point about what a minefield it is to be a public figure though. People get offended by the stuff you write, so you go off and stop writing for a month, and then they're offended that you were able to go on vacation for so long.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  You just have to deal with it. People _will_ get offended. Being several (quite a lot of) orders of magnitude less influential than TC (and you), I try hard not to deal with it. I will invariably offend a more or less constant portion of my readership every article I write. I try to be as fair and as truthful as I can and, if that offends, say, 10% of my readers, so be it. There is nothing more I could do without compromising my own integrity. And that is far more important than how many people I may offend.
- crescendo 18y ago
  I'm not offended by the fact that he went on a long vacation, or even that he wrote an article about it. What bugs me is that somehow it's front-page news. This article has zero content.
  - pg 18y ago
    The news is not the part about where he stayed; it's that he's back on the job.
  - Andys 18y ago
    The information about the Hanalei Surfboard House was the most interesting thing I've ever gotten out of TechCruch for years.
18y ago

axod 18y ago

It'll be interesting to see if he addresses things like the last.fm story, and how things really went without him. Good he's back, I think the quality of TC dropped there...

wheels 18y ago

This already got killed once: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499909 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499909

time_management 18y ago

He said something about being fully booked, but I offered to pay more than his usual rate and said I’d plug Surfboard House on TechCrunch (consider that a disclosure). He had (and still has) no idea what TechCrunch is, but the dollars did the trick. Schedules were juggled, I stayed. I take "schedules were juggled" to indicate that other patrons were bumped, which would make MA a world-class shithead.

pclark 18y ago
why? would that make him a shithead? Surely it'd make the hotel a "shithead" or something? The visitor that got bumped probably got a discount if he comes back in a week or two, or something.
- time_management 18y ago
  You make a good point, which is that there might have been a discount offered or some other incentive, and the rescheduling might have been entirely voluntary on the part of the patrons. I'm not going to pass final judgment, since I clearly don't know the full story. My observation is that many hotels aren't so kind about this sort of thing. I was once on the receiving end (sort of) of a similar situation, in Juneau, AK. It's a small city with a short tourism window, so it tends to be packed in the summer. Some rich piece of shit called up one of the major hotels and asked for half of it so he could throw a party. Patrons were booted, regardless of reservations. I wasn't in that hotel, so I wasn't directly booted, but it affected the entire city, because it was impossible to get a hotel due to all the displaced people. My girlfriend and I ended up staying in a "historic" ex-brothel hotel in a room right over a nightclub.

gcheong 18y ago

Now I know where I might want to stay if I ever go to Hawaii. Thanks for posting this.

mhb 18y ago

Hairy?

olifante 18y ago
Pain?

mccon104 18y ago

wow i have to say i'm a little astonished at the emotional (and largely negative) responses from people to Arrington simply announcing to his readers that he is back. he wasn't trying to start a flame war. he simply let his readers know what he had done during his hiatus. and yes this is noteworthy for the startup community. when the largest start-up related blogger (like it or not) comes back after being a month out of the game (7 months in newspaper years), it's kinda a big deal. how is a "who the hell cares?!" comment worthy of 65 upvotes? it doesn't even pass the first 2 words in the comment guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).