This reaction doesn't make any sense to me. I think it's become fashionable (especially on HN) to bash on the startup world's "paper of record" with pretty poor evidence.
So we end up with comments that start with:
"I hate Tech Crunch as much as anyone else but,"
"Arrington pushes startups he invested in"
"Everything's about twitter"
"I don't read Tech Crunch because of their focus on x but,"
"Tech Crunch doesn't break real news"
"Tech Crunch needs a real editor"
"Tech Crunch only does favors for friends"
"Tech Crunch only wrote this as linkbait"
And now, with no relevance whatsoever to a meaningful discussion about the article, we get a knee jerk, play to the haters, "I quit Tech Crunch!".
In this community, I feel there needs to be a base line of respect for entrepreneurs and the people that help them. And make no mistake, Michael Arrington is both. If you have a legitimate gripe, write something constructive. There is little or no value, however, to reinforcing this idea that everything Tech Crunch does is wrong or bad.
Ok, I'll take a stab at this. I know basically nothing about Arrington. I don't know what he's invested in or who he's friends with, nor do I care.
What I do know is that TechCrunch publishes utter trash. It's a tabloid that caters to the geek crowd. The articles are poorly written and even more poorly researched. Some of them are based on sources as flimsy as a single sentence fragment of a tweet if not a complete fabrication or speculation.
What is purported to be news is heavily editorialized. What is purported to be analysis is the kind of tin foil hat stuff one could expect to see in the typical Slashdot comment. Simply put, the TechCrunch writers are lousy journalists- if you can even use the word "journalist" at all.
In my opinion, some of the people at TechCrunch have questionable ethics. Revealing a company's internal documents in piecemeal over the course of a week to give readers some little voyeuristic thrill while raking in the advertising dollars is wrong. It would be one thing if they were blowing the whistle on something illegal or immoral that was going on there, but those documents revealed nothing of real value. It was simply a peek behind the curtains.
TechCrunch is not in the business of information and certainly is not the "paper of record" for startups and entrepreneurs. They are in the business of selling controversy where it doesn't necessarily exist. It is for this exact reason that they often have a headline designed to stoke the nerd rage fire on top of an article that is little more than some asshole's opinion or wild guess about how something is going to play out. When TechCrunch actually does publish something newsworthy there are usually several other sources with better coverage and better writing.
This is precisely the problem. My suspicion is that you should be flagging individual articles, not sources. That's no better than my grandfather ignoring any hard news reporting that comes from the New York Times because it has a "liberal bias".
In the case of Twitter's internal documents, the reason you saw nothing of "real value" is precisely because Tech Crunch drew a line between releasing information that could be damaging to individuals and the company and things they could report that were relatively benign. They received much more information than they ended up publishing. Tech Crunch could have made more in ad dollars had they just published everything. They painstakingly satisfied an obligation to share information with the public and protect companies and individuals who they saw as having done nothing wrong. Whatever side they ended up on, they certainly tried to be transparent about it.
As for the opinion part of reviewing startups and their software, I don't see any other way to go about it. Most small startup companies that are covered in Tech Crunch are based on a few facts (company name, founders, employees, location, backers) and then a review of their product or service. This is inherently an opinion. There just aren't that many "facts" about startups at the beginning. There are beliefs and perceptions. You can disagree with the opinion or analysis, but I don't see how you could avoid having one.
According to your logic, we should put exactly the same trust in an article in NYTimes vs an article in the National Enquirer, only "flagging individual articles", that is, ignoring the well-deserved reputation of either source.
That's not how people normally treat news sources or opinion sources. New York Times worked hard to establish the quality of its reporting. Tech Crunch worked hard to show its reader s that quality takes n-th place in its reporting to sensationalism, sleazy behavior, unsubstantiated rumors, heavily biased reporting, etc. etc. Both publications should enjoy the fruit of their labors.
It's an unfunny joke to call Techcrunch "a paper of record" for anything. I'm not saying it's the National Enquirer of the startup world, but it's much closer to that than to being the New York Times of the startup world.
Since Techchrunch now has zero credibility with me, and I think its articles should be treated as untrusted and biased by default, it's a waste of time for me to dig through a heap of garbage to find an occassionally honest and informative piece. Thus the strategy of flagging all Techcrunch submissions is a sound one; the only reason I don't is that I'm too lazy to remember to.
"A fine, ringing denunciation. But let's consider performance. Do you learn more about startups from TechCrunch or the New York Times? I learn much more from TechCrunch. By the time the NYT gets around to writing about a startup, the news is usually pretty old. And they often get the story wrong, despite their supposedly greater professionalism, because they don't understand the domain as well as TC's writers do.
If you think there's a better source of information about startups than TechCrunch, what is it?"
I think that's an interesting point - should articles be flagged based on source?
In most cases, the answer is no. But for a source that has proven time and again to produce content that makes you feel stupider after reading/viewing it, then I think a flag based on source is justifiable. I'm not saying whether Tech Crunch fits this category, but I'm sure we can all think of some sources that do.
>> They painstakingly satisfied an obligation to share information with the public and protect companies and individuals who they saw as having done nothing wrong
I'm not here to debate the ethics of releasing the documents; my question is, if there was nothing of interest (i.e. newsworthy) in the documents what was their obligation to post it?
I mean if I dig through your trash and post your credit card bills that list what you buy at the grocery store even though it may be of general interest to see what someone purchases at the store, there is no obligation to post it since it isn't news.
There does need to be a base line of respect, and Arrington doesn't give it. He knows he doesn't as well -- according to his last Twitter post, he's "ripshit mad" (http://twitter.com/arrington/status/2949113649) that people are talking about "unauthorised" crunchpad info -- yet he's happy enough to do precisely the same thing to other firms.
(As for your NY Times analogy, it doesn't hold up. It's more like saying "I think the Sulzbergers are dreadful people who are destroying something that should be good, so I refuse to read their paper".)
It's so frustrating that more people don't demand better tech journalism than that provided by TC. Tech was one of the first areas where online news swept away traditional media, but the service we get now is much, much worse.
Having given it a few years now, I rather think I'd take a copy of Byte every 30 days than 30 up-to-the-minute days of coverage from TechCrunch. We deserve better.
But, why not just jailbreak the phone? The article is so hyperbolic... 'i quit tech crunch' is the best one sentence critique of Arrington i've seen yet.
Yes, like proclaiming your love for Apple, then making a large, dramatic gesture of protesting something they do, writing a blog post about it, and raking in the page views as your dramatic gesture goes viral?
It's all a circus show.
I'm not saying the complaints against Apple are baseless, but how much of this article do you think is Arrington taking a principled stand, and how much is it Arrington seeing an opportunity for TechCrunch and taking it?
Hyperbolic? I don't really see where. The only thing I might call it is derivative, since Steven Frank of Panic said much of the same things yesterday about his reasons for leaving the iPhone/AT&T world.
I've been torn lately as well about staying in the AT&T ecosystem (mostly over the dropped call rate in New York City). It's embarrassing to be talking to a client only to have your phone call drop (three times in a 15 minute conversation on one occasion).
jm4 says it best regarding the quality of editorial content in TC... but i'll just say he doesn't acknowledge that there are very solid business reasons for blocking a competitor like google releasing a voip product that competes with at&t's network, cannibalizes revenue, etc.
he accuses at&t/apple of moral failure for acting in their best business interests as if techcrunch doesn't operate according to the same principles (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Seeing snarky comments like this voted up to near the top of the page really illustrates the decline that HN has seen over the past week or so...
I wish that there was a way for HN to meta-moderate. That is, give specific moderators a heavier influence over things (and new users almost none at all). I think his would help curtail the reddit culture migrating onto HN.
What would you expect? It's a story about Arrington's opinion. I think it's valid to question whether or not we should even care.
There's not much else to say. The AT&T/Apple/Google issue has already been the subject of several submissions here, and I don't think this post adds anything to it.
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to address here...
This is a three word comment with absolutely no substance at all, poking fun at the headline. It adds absolutely nothing to the discussion about the iphone, and isn't really appropriate for HN. About a week and a half ago, this comment would almost immediately be moved to the bottom of the page, and made nearly invisible.
