If Michael Arrington is Fired, Why is TechCrunch Publishing?
If the ship (or at least the captain of the ship) is going down, if founder Michael Arrington is really fired from AOL, then why is "his" (technically: Arianna Huffington's) site TechCrunch still publishing? The first thing you do when the corporate overlords freak out on your publication is conduct a work stoppage. The conclusion you would draw is: that's a lot of people who could lose their jobs, and they don't feel like Arrington could protect them. (He couldn't, likely. They work for AOL.) So apparently the demands made by Arrington—essentially, "sell me back my site or let me do whatever I want"—are not being met. (Did anyone not see this coming?) The best part of this is that no one can back down from any of their positions. Can you smell all the lawyers at work now??
As much as I dislike AOL and especially A.H., I don't understand how anyone is supporting Arrington in this – this is not an insult or a call to fight, but a serious question, because obviously some smart people are defending him, and so chances are I'm missing some side of the story.
The way I've seen the story is, Arrington wants to run a blog which covers in a journalistic way an area in which he would also like have a VC firm. This obvious conflict of interest has been called out as a reason for him to be removed from one position or the other. Done.
The only counterargument I've been hearing in defense of Arrington lately is "Well, he used to invest in the past as well, and TC is very open about disclosing the potential conflicts." This feels kind of lame?
@Leon Saint-Jean Precisely. For all the talk of the importance of editorial independence, what about the editorial credibility of a publication whose editor also runs a VC firm?
@Leon Saint-Jean TC's response is probably best summed up by this post from MG Sieger on his personal blog. Basically his claim is that TechCrunch is for the most part non-hierarchical and that despite Arrington's "editor" title he doesn't actually direct coverage the way the editor of a traditional publication does. He just picks writers who he knows can "produce" and lets them off leash. Individual writers pull the trigger on publishing stories they write without going through another layer of editorial oversight. Thus, the idea that Arrington would be molding coverage to fit his investments doesn't make sense. In later post, Siegler points out that they just published a "scoop" that turns out to be something that was supposed to be announced at TechCrunch's own Disrupt conference as evidence of this.
Personally, while I can see how this works on a day-to-day basis, it seems naive to imagine that (a) Arrington couldn't at some point tell a writer "look, stop writing these kinds of stories" (or just fire them) if they were costing him and his fund money, or (b) that investors in the fund wouldn't at least sort of imagine that their investment would result in positive coverage on TC and/or get pissed when it doesn't. The TechCrunch response has basically been "Look, we're going to be transparent, you're just going to have to trust us," and they seem outraged when people aren't willing to do so.
@jfruh Hmm and now here is the counterpoint from an ex-TCer:
http://www.medacity.com/1029/cry-me-a-river-techcrunch/
It's a conspiracy. Arianna + Huffington = ARRINGTON.
CONNECT THE DOTS, AMERICA.
@keisertroll I have to admit that when I first read about this, my first reaction was "AOL fired Arianna Huffington"? Reading comprehension fail.
The thing is, Arrington's two options were really "These are the only two ways TechCrunch can continue with me in charge of it." Obviously there was always a third option, which was that he would be fired. And it looks like that's what happened!
One assumes that this option will lead to an exodus of talent to some TechCrunch-alike site whose domain name Arrington probably thought up and bought months ago, exactly like the exodus from Engadget of a few months back. Ha ha, 2 for 2, AOL!