91–100 of 118 posts
Am I the only one who sides with Arrington? I feel that TechCrunch has taken editorial ethics seriously so far, and see no reason why this shouldn't continue.
Ethical track record aside, players and coaches don't get to officiate games; active investors don't get a free pass to be journalists in the same space. He KNEW he'd have to leave TechCrunch for the fund. The rest is just posturing.
Most people don't realize this, but The New York Times is a big corporation like AOL (with sometimes similarish market caps). - The New York Times has invested in technology companies like AdKeeper, Automattic, Ongo, Brightcove, Federated Media, and funds like Betaworks (which is in dozens of startups in all kinds of fields). Have their reporters ever received tips and information about upcoming companies and tech la…
Counterpoint, the NY Times has an ethics policy that would never have allowed anything like TechCrunch (even before the newly announced investment fund plan!). http://www.nytco.com/press/ethics.html#keeping "44. Staff members may not engage in financial counseling (except through the articles they write). They may not manage money for others, offer investment advice, or help operate an investment company of any sort,…
The reality is that this is a distinction without difference today (especially when editorial is mixed with reporting). Disclosure should be part of every article, op-ed, or editorial. As far as I'm concerned, TechCrunch is actually setting a more rigorous standard than the Times is for future media.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's obviously not a pageview drive... This is making AOL look really bad, so if it's a pageview drive AOL is stupid. Especially because of the post MG wrote last night which sounded very honest and blunt.
AOL has been making money hand-over-fist while being the brunt of insults for 10 years now - this wouldn't be the first time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's obviously not a pageview drive... This is making AOL look really bad, so if it's a pageview drive AOL is stupid. Especially because of the post MG wrote last night which sounded very honest and blunt.
AOL has been making money hand-over-fist while being the brunt of insults for 10 years now - this wouldn't be the first time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint, the NY Times has an ethics policy that would never have allowed anything like TechCrunch (even before the newly announced investment fund plan!). http://www.nytco.com/press/ethics.html#keeping "44. Staff members may not engage in financial counseling (except through the articles they write). They may not manage money for others, offer investment advice, or help operate an investment company of any sort,…
The New York Times already has a way around this through Op-Ed columnists. Thus, it's okay for someone like Warren Buffett, Robert Reich, or someone the Times hires on spec to completely ignore these policies. If TechCrunch were to adhere to the Times' standard, then Arrington might alternatively be either an Op-Ed columnist paid on spec for his pieces of writing, a reporter paid to do a job, or a staff editorial wri…
The NYT doesn't let their reporters trade on companies they cover. Would it seem strange to you if a NYT reporter was hired to simultaneously manage a venture fund to invest in companies that are on his beat?
Arrington & Armstrong created CrunchFund as partners and the controversy is purely Arrington's doing. This latest breathlessly pissed off post demonstrates Arrington can still post anything he likes to TechCrunch. So why not write a clear and concise explanation on TC to begin with? I'd submit that Arrington is ready to leave TC to focus on investing, and there's no better way to do that than with a massive page-view…
It's still ball-sy and more than 99.99% of people in the business would do and yes, for that he gets respect points. Like it or not.
Arrington frames it as a matter of "editorial independence" and doesn't talk about ethics and conflict of interests. However, I don't see how anyone else (and least of all, the owners of TechCrunch) can ignore those two matters - and the resultant impact on the credibility of TechCrunch. Ultimately, Arrington made a conscious decision to sell TechCrunch to AOL. He made another conscious decision to become the founder…
This is so much fun. It seems that we now have a fight between two divas -- Arrington and Huffington. It is one of those fights where you do not care who wins, you just hope for lots of bloodshed. It's like a Raiders Broncos game! So Mike Arrington makes a stand for editorial independence. Now for those of you new to this whole discussion, we should note that Mike editorial independence Arrington started this whole b…
Am I the only one who sides with Arrington? I feel that TechCrunch has taken editorial ethics seriously so far, and see no reason why this shouldn't continue.
The capital J Journalist folks that MG Siegler referenced in his piece earlier have found TechCrunch's position on editorial ethics so laughable that it's almost hard to quantify the gulf between their expectations and the piddling concessions TechCrunch has offered over the years. I lived with a capital J journalist for a long time and got to know a lot of his coworkers and contacts, and I was really quite surprised…
You and I may think there's something seedy and questionable about writing for a trashy tabloid, but it's not up to us what other people want to read.
Most of the editors at Engadget, another tech blog owned by AOL have left publicly citing AOL's editorial policy. I am surprised by the lack of support that Hacker News community is showing to Arrington. Even in the post announcing the sale to AOL, there was clear stress about the editorial independence of TC. Arrington always has had a weird investment policy, but to his credit, he has maintained a strict transparen…