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Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

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Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#51

Post by ghaff »

PaulHoule wrote: post #12
marban wrote: post #9

You could say that about any tech blog of that era—RRW, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. The point is that tech has thankfully grown up, and they lost it to Bloomberg, NYT, FT, et al.

I'd say NYT and FT have very little coverage of startups and Bloomberg has occasional startups. Techcrunch is still the leader for stories like "Company A has raised $B million to do C" which my friends and I are very interested in when we are interested in C. (e.g. where are you going to find a job doing C? what are the prospects for your own startup idea around C?)

There was probably a more tight-knit/closely-connected (?) startup ecosystem back in the day when TC was a thing. Today it's probably too varied and large and has too many subsets.

> Techcrunch is still the leader for stories like "Company A has raised $B million to do C" which my friends and I are very interested in when we are interested in C.

I guess. On the other hand that's the sort of inside baseball news most people I know have zero interest in.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#52

Post by ghaff »

tootie wrote: post #34
mudil wrote: post #30

Speaking as an MD, as someone who founded a medical technology blog in 2004, and closed it this year. Not only TC collapsed but the whole blogosphere collapsed. The independent journalism has collapsed. When Google and others take your content, crawl your site, store your data, use it and resuse it to serve targeted ads on memes, the journalism becomes a useless pursuit without salary. Google destroyed the internet.…

Yeah, this exactly. VCs fueled by low interest rates sold the world on free content forever and when the well dried up, all the legacy businesses that wanted to invest in quality and human capital were left holding the bag. It isn't just independent journalism that's suffering. Local journalism and even former stalwarts like Newsweek or Forbes have gone to pot.

Well, it wasn't just VCs. A lot of traditional mainstream media felt that they had to do something. A few like the NYT and The Economist arguably had strong enough brands to come out the other side with subscriptions. Maybe Bloomberg Business Week and some smaller pubs. Forbes, post Malcolm, sold their soul for clicks. A ton of others aren't quite as sad but bad enough.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#53

Post by ilamont »

Legend has it that at one point an irate German entrepreneur spit on Mike at an event, leading us all to have a profound distrust of humanity.

This wasn't a legend. Arrington talked or wrote about it, I can't remember where. Maybe in one of his essays explaining why he was going to Hawaii to take a months-long break. He said he was at a conference and someone came up to him and spit in his face, and then walked away without saying a word. As I recall, he regarded the incident as a turning point that prompted soul-searching about what he was doing.

Traffic was paramount and ad sales were vital, so niche startup posts, posts that everyone once read but were now read by the company, lost their value. Over time, the value of a traditional TC story waned.

Nearly every newsroom has struggled with this for more than 15 years. The only media orgs that have been able to escape or partially escape the black hole of clickbait are by massive scale/subscriber counts (NYT, FT) or those funded by sales at some other profitable branch of the company, such as Bloomberg (terminals).

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#54

Post by jmole »

julianeon wrote: post #45

This article makes a great point towards the end that I'll repeat here: There should be another TC-like site reporting on startups now. Specifically there should be a news site about startups that has some critical distance from those startups - at least enough that it doesn't directly financially benefit from my perception of the companies that it's reporting on. Example, by analogy: I'm interested in news about Mic…

The information?

But the vibe there is more WSJ and less buzzfeed

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#55

Post by silisili »

julianeon wrote: post #45

This article makes a great point towards the end that I'll repeat here: There should be another TC-like site reporting on startups now. Specifically there should be a news site about startups that has some critical distance from those startups - at least enough that it doesn't directly financially benefit from my perception of the companies that it's reporting on. Example, by analogy: I'm interested in news about Mic…

I like the idea in concept, but feel you'd run into the same problem 'fair' reviewers run into: if you get too negative for a company's liking, or don't say the given talking points, they'll blacklist you. So other sites get the newest scoops, the convention invites, etc.

Why do you think almost every 'top' reviewer on YouTube is so positive on nearly everything? Because the ones who gave fair reviews quit getting early/free access.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#56

Post by julianeon »

jmole wrote: post #54
julianeon wrote: post #45

This article makes a great point towards the end that I'll repeat here: There should be another TC-like site reporting on startups now. Specifically there should be a news site about startups that has some critical distance from those startups - at least enough that it doesn't directly financially benefit from my perception of the companies that it's reporting on. Example, by analogy: I'm interested in news about Mic…

The information? But the vibe there is more WSJ and less buzzfeed

Great answer. The Information is solid and does fill this void.

I think the economics of it are such that it's a premium product and not as accessible as TC, which is why I didn't think of it. But in every other respect, it fits.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#57

Post by devindotcom »

calmbonsai wrote: post #33
karolist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do they really matter anymore? I remember them from the pre 2010 days but even then it seemed to me like linkedin for startups just without the social network thing, i.e. suits posting boring things. These days I can't remember clicking an article linking there ever.

Even before the acquisition, any TC article was viewed as a "negative signal" in my circles. They were a classic pay-to-play non-journalism rag for generating PR spin or, worse, cabal "take-down" pieces. They absolutely deserve all the irrelevance they've earned.

pay to play?

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#58

Post by renewiltord »

julianeon wrote: post #45

This article makes a great point towards the end that I'll repeat here: There should be another TC-like site reporting on startups now. Specifically there should be a news site about startups that has some critical distance from those startups - at least enough that it doesn't directly financially benefit from my perception of the companies that it's reporting on. Example, by analogy: I'm interested in news about Mic…

There’s no way to do that in mass market form. If you are too balanced you’ll get torn to bits. No one likes that guy. People like to talk about the media but it’s really responding to audience preferences.

For instance, in your case, would you want each article about Google to start with two pages of argumentation on “how terrible their privacy practices are”? Because that’s what the audience wants.

You can have that while the screaming hordes outside yell “paywall?! Paywall?!” But it’s not going to be free like TechCrunch.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#59

Post by rurp »

Scoundreller wrote: post #39
mudil wrote: post #30

Speaking as an MD, as someone who founded a medical technology blog in 2004, and closed it this year. Not only TC collapsed but the whole blogosphere collapsed. The independent journalism has collapsed. When Google and others take your content, crawl your site, store your data, use it and resuse it to serve targeted ads on memes, the journalism becomes a useless pursuit without salary. Google destroyed the internet.…

I truly believe that Google de-ranked most blogs. Used to be they would put a mix of results (some blogs, even small time ones, some forums, some official sites) so that you’d probably get whatever you were looking for on pg1. Now it’s far more corporate. I probably shouldn’t have ranked as high as I did on my Joe Blow blog with better directions to my local passport office or phone numbers for my bank (because the b…

I don't think it's even in question that Google de-ranked blogs and other independent sites. I remember Eric Schmidt talking about this publicly back when he was running things, saying that they were intentionally up-ranking larger corporate sites. Google had been the main way that blogs got new readers, then Google took that traffic away. It's no wonder that ecosystem has mostly died off, and Google deserve most of the blame for why the public internet has become such a bland corporate-controlled environment.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#60

Post by rurp »

brandur wrote: post #31
brigadier132 wrote: post #18

> White dude CEOs like Brian Armstrong and Jesse Powell came out hard against DEI efforts and even paid employees to leave, which led, incidentally, to morale at their companies so low it could be measured in millisieverts. But they were making money, baby, so it was all good. > So, by all measures, Alexandr Wang’s MEI bullshit was just that, bullshit Amazing, I don't think he gets it. His rant about white dudes whil…

Also notable that the author didn't link Haje's (the TechCrunch person who railed against Alexander Wang) actual writing because he knew it doesn't make either Haje, or his argument in favor of Haje, look good. So, here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20240628212036/https://techcrunc... The Pulitzer Prize-worthy content in question: > I would invite him — and those supporting them — to fuck all the way off. You mi…

Yeah that was a weird pivot in the article. I enjoyed it up to that point, but the strident defense of that terrible Haje article seemed out of left field; like I'd switched to reading Twitter for a couple paragraphs. Of all the things that has hurt TC, getting rid of Haje for that article seems like it should be at the very bottom of the list.
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