sorry to be the skeptic, but I don't buy this at all. its in everybody's best interest for arrington to manage the fund full time, be a guest writer, or speaker and be an advocate of his startups and aol and arrington both get paid when his companies exit. so why all the noise ... traffic. From all these comments people are eating it up. Just like arrington made all that noise about breach of contract with the joo joo pad and how he has all these lawsuits. he was fortunate they never held him to a contract.
TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
51–60 of 114 posts
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#52The notion that Mike, or anyone else, investing in a company would dictate some sort of giant conflicted agenda is laughable. Literally. If Mike tried to get me to write some unreasonable post about a company he had invested in, I would laugh at him. But he would never do that. No, what's laughable is expecting your readership to rely on your characterisation of your relationship with your editor as a guide to the ed…
I'm not sure where your link on AllThingsD was meant to lead. Was it this article?
http://allthingsd.com/20110902/crunchfund-unethical-ventures...
Edit: Thought this excerpt was interesting (from the article above)
"Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however confidential, except those he invests in."
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#53I am a big fan of TC and of Arrington. Yes, he is not to everyone's liking, but he has built an amazing business from nothing. However, I have a problem with AOL & TechCrunch forming a startup fund.
TC has a huge impact on the startup market. They are the most powerful tech news business in the world and can literally move the market on a startup with a single blog post. If it is positive your user numbers sky rocket and the VC's are calling. If it is negative your investors are on the phone asking questions.
The CrunchFund gives them skin in the game. TC will determine to a significant extent the value of the CrunchFund portfolio.
We read TC because we trust them to give an unbiased view of our startup world. Yes, MG loves Apple and he gets a lot of stick for it. But what if it came out that all of MG's pension money and savings were in Apple stock. It changes things, right?
If the journalistic trust between the publication and her readers is lost, TC's influence and readership will dissipate.
IMHO the greatest threat to TC is not Arrington leaving. It is the CrunchFund, and the erosion of TCs integrity and credibility that will come with it.
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#54[deleted]
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
He’s starting an investment portfolio called CrunchFund. The worry is that TC will write stuff that is pro-"CrunchFunded" companies and slam their competitors.
OK, so AOL doesn't want the potential conflict of interest and that's all there is to this?
AOL is a big org, and different sections have different needs.
The business guys think the conflict of interest is a selling point - take CrunchFund money, or risk TC slamming your business! The people in AOL management who actually care about journalistic integrity (both of them?) think it's bad.
It seems the compromise position is to move Mike (the guy who upholds TC's integrity) off TC, so there's no conflict of interest, and move some corporate guy in there to keep things honest.
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#56The notion that Mike, or anyone else, investing in a company would dictate some sort of giant conflicted agenda is laughable. Literally. If Mike tried to get me to write some unreasonable post about a company he had invested in, I would laugh at him. But he would never do that. No, what's laughable is expecting your readership to rely on your characterisation of your relationship with your editor as a guide to the ed…
I'm not sure where your link on AllThingsD was meant to lead. Was it this article? http://allthingsd.com/20110902/crunchfund-unethical-ventures... Edit: Thought this excerpt was interesting (from the article above) "Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however con…
There is a small "Ethics Statement" link at right, across from her name and next to the Email/RSS links. It's a little too long to post here, but certainly worth reading.
In other news, #links are bad for usability. Who knew?
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#57I generally like Siegler's stuff but he's so far down the rabbit hole now he can't see the reasoning behind concepts like 'bias' and 'disclosure.' Worse, he seems to be fully believe these things don't, or shouldn't, apply because he works in "new media." It concerns me that a so-called bastion of tech reporting aspires to have all the ethics of TMZ or your friendly neighborhood penny stock newsletter pump and dump s…
I think it's because he believes that "real" tech reporters will do all the disclosure that is necessary.
Is there any evidence that TechCrunch _hasn't_ done necessary disclosure?
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure where your link on AllThingsD was meant to lead. Was it this article? http://allthingsd.com/20110902/crunchfund-unethical-ventures... Edit: Thought this excerpt was interesting (from the article above) "Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however con…
There is a small "Ethics Statement" link at right, across from her name and next to the Email/RSS links. It's a little too long to post here, but certainly worth reading. In other news, #links are bad for usability. Who knew?
#links are excellent for usability on pages that don't try to coerce it into representing something it isn't.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fragment_iden...
Having named anchors so people can link to specific sections is good. Having some javascript mess around with storing state in them, not so much.
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#59There is no logical reason to believe that an AOL/Arrington backed VC fund could be anything other than a conflict of interest.
In any sane universe, Mike Arrington would actually step down and announce his choice to leave TC because of this potential conflict.
Re: TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over
#60Wondering that nobody gets it: that's just a desperate post to AOL/Schoenfeld that he wants to become TC's new head
