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The interruption was a bit rude. Arrington is a lawyer, and that's just what legal folks do. Laporte felt it was a bit disrespectful, and though the level of
by htsh 17y ago
The interruption was a bit rude. Arrington is a lawyer, and that's just what legal folks do. Laporte felt it was a bit disrespectful, and though the level of reaction was not warranted, a reaction was understandable. Laporte has been around forever, and I think he's earned a pretty good reputation amongst nerds. Also, have you seen crunchgear? These people do not know their tech -- that much is clear. They are in the business of selling tech, not creating it. That being said, they're important.
I'm a recovering lawyer myself and I left because working with lawyers was worse than anything I had experienced before (which was working mainly with startups and non-profits in NY).
Its fascinating to me. There are a lot of bitter nerds out there who passionately hate T/C, like fanatically so. It seems the slashdot/reddit crowd has repeatedly criticized those guys for being marketers rather than geeks, and they are right in that basic premise but I think the level of animosity is unwarranted. Even if these guys aren't pedigreed nerds, they are fascinated by and love technology and they are an important part of the industry.
Its one of the reasons I like HN -- it has a much more nuanced view of the important role folks like Arrington and the VC community play in the bigger world outside of nerdland.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- quisxt 17y agoI think there are at least a few nerds who also hate TechCrunch because of some pretty shoddy journalism like the whole Last.fm imbroglio.
- htsh 17y agoYeah, agreed. Though he tries his best to hide the fact, Arrington was a lawyer at a big law firm, neither a nerd nor a journalist. And here he is running a "news" site about technology. To his credit, he filled a void. I wish there were folks like Arrington around and things like the VC-funded "internet week" in NY this week back in 1999 during the first dot-com boom. Something is better than nothing. And he's on the right side of a lot of things -- specifically on intellectual property regulation. And also to his credit, he's trying and he listens. He's been responding to commenters on his site and there's something to be said about that.
- mikedouglas 17y agothough the level of reaction was not warranted, a reaction was understandable. How could he continue with the review? It was obviously going to be a positive one, and just by raising the question of bias, Arrington pissed in the pool. Anything Leo could have said would've been filtered through that lens.
- htsh 17y agoNo, no I agree. He not only interrupts him, he does so to question someone like Laporte's journalistic integrity. Coming from someone like Arrington immediately following the last.fm thing, this is clearly something to object strongly to. But Laporte does get pretty salty there. And at one point he tells all of them to fuck off, not just Arrington.