

Yes, Of Course I’ll Resign Unless Mike Arrington Chooses His Successor - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/08/not-leaving-quietly/

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jbigelow76
Post is gone. Let's see if it will fit in a HN comment:

"Oh boy. At this point, even the shit-show is becoming a shit-show. According
to Dan Primack at Fortune, Mike Arrington has been fired by AOL. My inbox is
full of emails from journalists, friends and total strangers — all asking if I
can explain what’s going on. The vast majority of those correspondents are
clearly hoping for a mass walk-out of writers if Mike is really gone. The
Atlantic is already predicting what might happen post-walkout.

Meantime, Mike has gone to ground — presumably somewhere in his fortified
Seattle compound — although with apparently as little idea as any of us what
the final outcome will be. Primack’s story says it’s a fait accompli, while
others say the situation is “still developing”. I spoke to a senior staffer at
TCHQ yesterday who told me “No-one knows anything. It’s bizarre. Surreal.”

Rather than replying to a billion emails, or appearing on Bloomberg, or
talking to PBS or Tweeting something threatening-but-ambiguous; here’s my
position. And it’s basically unchanged from where I was last week.

TechCrunch lives or dies on its editorial independence. Right now, that means
TechCrunch — in the person of its founding editor — must be allowed to pick
its next Editor In Chief. Arianna Huffington has made clear that she wants
Mike gone and TechCrunch to be assimilated into Huffington Post, under her
direct control. That means whoever she might pick as “editor” will be little
more than an avatar for her; a cardboard cut-out installed to do her bidding.
That’s so ridiculously unacceptable a situation that the idea makes me feel
physically sick. It will be the death of TechCrunch and everything we’ve all
worked for these past years.

Sure, the brand will live on — and as long as we keep writing about cool apps
we’ll probably still get amazing traffic. But traffic and a famous domain name
is not why I — or most of the TechCrunch staff and editors I’ve spoken to in
the past few days — came to work here. As Fred Wilson wrote earlier today:
“TechCrunch also has a voice, a swagger, a “fuck you” attitude that comes from
Mike… They need to keep the remaining team, the voice, and that attitude if
they want to remain at the top of the world of tech media.” Damn fucking
right.

Presumably, given how much TechCrunch and AOL both have riding on the success
of next week’s Disrupt conference, an announcement as to TechCrunch’s future
leadership must be imminent. I’m not going to speak for the other members of
the team, but my own position is clear: unless Mike Arrington appoints his own
successor, guaranteeing that TechCrunch retains its editorial independence,
I’m gone. Done. Out of the door.

Ceding control to the Huffington Post will be the death of everything — the
voice, the swagger, the “fuck you” attitude — that makes TechCrunch great; and
I’m not going to stay around to watch that happen.

Four days." - Paul Carr

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jbigelow76
Just to clarify, that last sentence of "Four days." was the end of Paul's post
and not a truncated sentence.

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nateberkopec
Selling to AOL - millions of dollars. Pretending that you care about editorial
independence while you invest in startups at the same time - priceless.

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greyman
No, that's unfair, he cares about it. Bud now the loser seems to be AOL...what
prevents Mike to just take the core team with him and establish a brand new
blog? Most TC readers will just move there and techcrunch.com becomes
worthless instantly...

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mkr-hn
Seems like the post is back. Might have been a mistake.

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borkt
Link appears dead. Does anyone have it?

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Sundog
Really surprised they deleted the article. So much for editorial independence.

