
Michael Arrington and MG Siegler Return to TechCrunch - ry0ohki
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/getting-the-band-back-together/
======
pdeuchler
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Being generous, this is slightly above despicable behavior. Both Arrington and
Siegler left TC because of their involvement in the CrunchFund and the obvious
conflicts of interest that arise when you report on companies you invest in.
Neither of them have abandoned any duties at CrunchFund.

AOL and TC have blatantly tried to mislead the public by initially dismissing
them and then rehiring them after the hoopla has toned down. Furthermore, the
only lip service they give to this possible conflict of interests is a
pandering platitude designed to shove the issue under the rug. And I guess if
you complain you aren't smart enough to tell the difference between a shill
and a journalist? [1]

This is deception bordering on fraud, as I have no doubt whatsoever that
AOL/TC/Arrington/Siegler will now use this new platform to make more money via
the Crunch Fund.

It's sickening to imagine the adults in charge could have ever assumed this
would be _even close_ to a good idea.

[1] ("we also believe our readers are smart enough to put these columns into
context")

Edit: Am I being too much of a conspiracy theorist to notice this was
announced around the same time as the iPad Mini was announced?

~~~
vidarh
> Both Arrington and Siegler left TC because of their involvement in the
> CrunchFund and the obvious conflicts of interest that arise when you report
> on companies you invest in

Uhm. Mike wrote about companies he had interest in in TC from the very
beginning, with various levels of attention to disclaimers about it.

AOL as the corporate parent in TC is an investor in CrunchFund, so it's not
like Mike and Sieglers absence from TC has somehow meant that AOL hasn't had
an interest in TC writing favorably about the same companies as the two of
them either.

I don't see how this actually materially changes anything. You're free to
dislike that. They're free to write. You don't need to pay attention to the,.

------
evanm
Screw you. Mike you are such a troll, screw you. I'm not kidding, screw you,
you asshole, screw you. I'm being very serious Mike. I'm infuriated that you
would imply that because I had a review unit, that would influence me... screw
you... I'm throwing you all off—fuck you guys.

I'm not kidding. I'm done. We're going into reruns.

What a... what a jerk. I've had it with Mike Arrington. He is the most
trollish person I've ever worked with.

~~~
jgrahamc
For people who don't know what this is about:
<http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/ouch/>

~~~
hkmurakami
Leo has a soothing voice that makes even four letter words sound smooth :P

------
dannyr
Maybe it's just me but I feel that since Arrington & MG stopped writing, the
rhetoric in the startup blogging space has toned down.

While some of my favorite tech posts was written by Arrington and MG, I'm not
too excited for their return.

~~~
padobson
+1, I stopped following them on Twitter, I stopped reading their blogs, and I
read less TechCrunch.

Call it strife, call it drama, call it whatever you want, I have much less of
it without those two. This is just a reason to avoid TechCrunch now.

~~~
methoddk
I avoid TechCrunch at all costs. I can always find the story somewhere else,
and it almost always has more substance than TC's article.

------
jgrahamc
Though neither a critics' nor a public favorite, Spinal Tap continues to fill
a much needed void.

------
neya
That's just terrible. As such TechCrunch is very biased and now you have an
Apple salesman on board (MG Seigler). I'm just waiting for someone to tear
this organization apart, because what they are doing to Journalism is terribly
wrong.

You see, Journalism has advanced to a huge extent in the online world. In the
real world, a journalist would have to travel places, arrange interviews, and
so forth. It's much much hardwork than 'online journalism'. Organizations like
TechCrunch and Gizmodo are basically thieves. They don't have to travel
anywhere to get the news, they just 'steal' it from goodwill communities like
Hackernews and Reddit and make the titles misleading or 'attractive' so they
can get more clicks and add bias to it, insert ads wherever possible, and
write articles favoring companies that sponsor them. I can list you so many
articles that Gizmodo spins up from Hackernews. Less than 10% of their
blogposts are fair and original. The rest are just rip-off from non-profit
communities like HN. That is just plain wrong.

TechCrunch has never been afraid of admitting being sponsored by companies,
infact, Matt has once admitted that he was sponsored by Apple to write a post
favoring their technology over a competitors' based on meaningless grounds.

And Gizmodo, needless to say, are pro-apple, no matter what. What is so bad
about these organizations are that they are unfair. They are deceiving people.
They spend initially huge amounts of time and effort to build this trust with
their audience and they just misuse it by writing unfair articles in favor of
companies sponsoring them later. They are killing fair journalism. That is
just plain wrong.

These organizations are just a shame to Journalism itself. As a journalist,
your duty is to report the news as it is, not what you think of the news. No
one gives a fuck to what you think of the news. We all have our own opinions,
right? Especially infront of a huge audience, there is a moral obligation to
be honest, unbiased. You will never find such ethics with TechCrunch or
Gizmodo. For example, recently on Gizmodo, you will find pro-Apple articles
suggesting comparisons between every single device on this planet concluding
Apple is superior in all aspects, but, never any of its disadvantages. iOS was
hacked recently (Security hole). When was the last time you read that on
TechCrunch or Gizmodo? You didn't, because they didn't write it. Why didn'
they write it?

That is why I am not a fan of MG Seigler or Jesus Diaz or anyone else from
these shady organizations. They are just a shame to the Journalism community
and they share our knowledge and profit out of it by wrong means. They think
they are intelligent, but an average HN reader has more knowledge about tech
than these biased, paid writers.

I hope TC falls off soon.

~~~
pdeuchler
You're missing the bigger issue. Siegler and Arrington have not left their
positions at CrunchFund (where they invest in the companies they report on)-
the main reason they left in the first place. Such journalistic conflicts of
interest are _not_ ethical or accepted within the Journalism/Tech industry.

AOL has simply waited for the uproar to die down to restate
Arrington/Siegler... insulting, frankly.

~~~
gjulianm
I don't see your point. They're returning as columnists, not full-time writers
neither managers. If they state clearly their investments and don't talk about
them in TC, I don't see why wouldn't that be OK (independently of your
opinions about their writing). Their opinion and thinking can be valuable for
other topics.

~~~
pdeuchler
Because like it or not, Siegler and Arrington are _irreparably and intimately_
tied to TechCrunch.

Do you honestly expect Average Joe to go to a TC article written by Arrington
(aka the Founder of TC) and not associate him with TC? Not conflate his
opinions with TC?

I don't care what they preface their columns with... there's nothing they can
do to avoid people associating their opinions and positions with TC, even
subconsciously. Even as independents over the past couple months people still
associate what they say with TC.

Of course, AOL knows this perfectly well and went ahead anyway.

------
jmduke
I'm not well versed in the history and context of TechCrunch or CrunchFund,
but isn't the very notion of a startup investor writing (supposedly unbiased)
columns about startup news an incredible conflict of interest? Am I missing
something?

~~~
j_baker
FTA:

 _Are they conflicted? Yeah, of course they are, and we will be transparent on
that issue at all times. But, we also believe our readers are smart enough to
put these columns into context and understand the impact of CrunchFund’s
investing on the editorial._

~~~
hkmurakami
_> But, we also believe our readers are smart enough to put these columns into
context and understand the impact of CrunchFund’s investing on the editorial._

That's like soda companies saying that their consumers are smart enough to
recognize that the sugar content in their drinks can have adverse effects on
their health (without mentioning neither their tremendous and ubiquitous
marketing efforts, nor the way their drinks are chemically designed to cause
overconsumption)

~~~
178
Yes, they're saying, "assume we're biased."

------
tptacek
_Welcome back Mike and MG. I’m sure this move will go smoothly and will never
come back to bite me._

No, not you, Jay Kirsch. Just the rest of us.

------
sami36
They're both TOXIC. I was so glad when these two departed & the rest of their
ilk self-exiled to Pando Daily (Sarah Lacy & Paul Carr, to be specific). & now
that ! _SIGH_

------
capred
The problem is these guys themselves think they are awesome. They are not.
Case in point: they came back to TechCrunch because they were failures without
it.

These guys are really bad for the startup ecosystem because they are not
intellectual and move the focus from the story/startup to themselves.

------
yalogin
Techcrunch and other sites have become irrelevant for me. Reddit and hacker
news actually serve as a much better, much more informed news/link filter.
There is nothing the tech blogs do that I don't get on these two sites.

------
xpose2000
When MG and Arrington distanced themselves from pandodaily it felt like they
kept moving closer towards techcrunch. Now this certainly solidifies it.

I'm not sure what to make of the news to be quite honest. All that
drama...much ado about nothing?

------
sidcool
Arrington is fine. But MG? Really? Online journalism is getting Honey Boo
Booed.

------
methoddk
This is hardly front page worthy _hacker_ news.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
Michael Arrington returns to Techcrunch, and with pretty high correlation,
"this isn't hacker news" comments return to HN.

~~~
methoddk
Because it isn't. Who writes for TechCrunch is not front page worthy news.

EDIT: There always seems to be some air of schoolboy drama surrounding
TechCrunch.

For example:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/sep/15/techcrunch-a...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/sep/15/techcrunch-
arrington-startups)

[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-43452680/techcrunch-d...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-43452680/techcrunch-
drama-fest-is-an-aol-management-meltdown/)

And I'm sure that this news will spur some, too. Who cares?

~~~
petercooper
I'm more amazed it's still trendy for geeks to hate on the people in tech
media. Though that would have passed on like platform shoes and bell bottoms
by now.

~~~
methoddk
Not hating on all the people in tech media. I'm hating on two _specific_
people in tech media. Two people who, in my experience reading their material,
are biased and their opinions shouldn't hold as much weight as they do.

Do you really think that it is okay that they are allowed to be in journalism
in an area where they both have financial stake in companies they report on?

~~~
petercooper
_Two people who, in my experience reading their material, are biased and their
opinions shouldn't hold as much weight as they do._

Everyone's biased. Read any political editorial. They are clear with their
biases. There's a slant to everything you have a personal investment in
(whether financial or just sheer interest in the topic). Truly objective
journalism is _very_ rare nowadays. An ersatz veneer of objectivity is common
but that's more insidious, IMHO.

 _Do you really think that it is okay that they are allowed to be in
journalism in an area where they both have financial stake in companies they
report on?_

If they disclose it, yes. Journalism is no sacred cow. It's as scummy and
scabby as any industry. The fact they disclose their conflicts of interest
puts them above any journalist who has been taken for dinner or drinks by a PR
flack or big company or flown out on a press junket (pathetically common,
rarely disclosed to readers).

------
kmfrk
I don't care, this is friggin' hilarious. I can't believe we're dealing with
adults.

------
Uchikoma
Vote me down, but WTF?

------
skeltoac
So what? Tech startup journalism is barely even related to Journalism with a
capital J. Why should a glorified press release network be held to the same
code of ethics? It shouldn't.

You should read non-technical tech blogs through the same lens as you read the
magazines in the grocery checkout. Could you ever take seriously a complaint
against People about a conflict of interest? I hope not.

------
Kilimanjaro
Kevin Rose returns to Digg!

* _crickets_ *

Commander Taco returns to Slashdot!

* _more crickets_ *

There are some things that can't be undone.

------
fourstar
sudo vim /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 techcrunch.com

