At this point it’s obvious that the TechCrunch site is incapable of doing the right thing. There is simply no moral compass over there to guide them so I am once again forced to stop producing puppet shows for a few dozen people and spell it out. Today’s topic is disclosures and crowdsourcing.
Turns out well-liked and respected entrepreneur Kosso did some research. He dug up a list of over 100 TechCrunch posts made by the disgraced reporter in question in a feed archived by Google.
Unfortunately if you attempt to click through to any of these articles you’ll find that they have been deleted from the TechCrunch site. Why?
According to an article on Mashable, the FTC will fine bloggers up to $11,000 if they don’t make proper disclosures.
Whether these rules apply to TechCrunch “news stories” or just the TechCrunch “endorsement stories” like the TechCrunch posts promoting colon cleansing products is not clear.
Also still not clear is Daniel’s relationship with TechCrunch. Mike Arrington, Editor-In-Chief of TechCrunch, said that Daniel is merely an intern and that “the frequency of [his] posts was light.” If by “light” he means “over a hundred stories” then okay. Daniel states no, he was not an unpaid intern but a part-time employee. The TechCrunch site lists him with a fancy title. Intern, employee, dog sitter, no one is too sure what this kid does. Which is it? It’s February. Did he just get a 1099 or not?
For Daniel Brusilovsky’s sake, I hope this gets resolved. Where would a 17 year old kid who can’t even afford a laptop come up with $11,000 to pay a government fine?
Razzle Dazzle Yazzem
Daniel sure is a go getter. He managed to buy a company for $15,000 in cash. He’s acquired two in fact.
In 2008 Loic Le Meur posted some video advice to Daniel and accepted a position on his board. Just yesterday Loic said there was no relationship, he was not on the board, and that he left the board three days later. Not bad, that’s a lot of contradictions crammed into 140 characters or less.
Loic’s company Seesmic gets a surprising amount of TechCrunch coverage over five figure acquisitions, too. Maybe Daniel’s possibly paid-for-posts of meaningless companies like ipodrip and divvyshot aren’t the issue here. Though I’d strongly suggest thats a solid start if you are the inquisitive type.
Why is TechCrunch even covering Yazzem? As a commenter points out, talking about “M&A”, “advertising” and “premium features” as part of a $15,000 deal between two companies with no web traffic clearly isn’t news. I wonder what the motivation could be? Conference revenues perhaps? Seems everybody connected to this debacle runs a conference. Loic’s got one. Daniel’s got one. I can’t wait for ScobleFest.
Mea Culpa Oprah
Apparently there’s a site called Mixergy and they got the exclusive video interview with Daniel. In the video, a 17 year old explains how he had access to publishing material directly to TechCrunch without any editorial oversight and that he did so. I wonder if the Washington Post, which syndicates TechCrunch, is amused by this.
Daniel also says that he didn’t sign any employment papers when he joined TechCrunch. You know, for a lawyer, Mike sure plays this stuff pretty loose. Mike also didn’t have any paperwork for the CrunchPad, you know, that tablet that all the bloggers were very excited about that does less and costs the same as the Apple iPad that bloggers are not that excited about?
But wow this Mixergy interview was widely praised with many people applauding Daniel for being such an upstanding citizen. The interview contains amazing exchanges such as:
Q: Was it “you do this [and] we give you [coverage]“?
A: In a sense, yes and no.
Q: You allegedly asked for a Macbook in exchange for a post about a start up. True? False?
A: It’s not true and it’s not false.
Clearly this guy is no Charlie Rose. Speaking of which, I wonder when Charlie is gonna figure out that having Arrington sit on the same show as Mossberg and Pogue is kinda like that Sesame Street game “One of these things is not like the others.” I’m sure that one of Charlie’s producers will eventually realize that Pete Cashmore has a bigger site and is better looking with a really cool accent.
There’s more but perhaps you guys could dig into it? As I’ve said I’m no journalist, I just am playing one on the internet. It’s fun! The 1938media tipline is currently clogged with reports of Scoble showing the TED Conference the same amount of respect he showed Ansel Adams photography equipment, but fire away.
#CrunchGate
While you’re at it, here’s some more stuff to think about. It shows the “news organization” that TechCrunch has turned into and also the massive impact and power it has on it’s “targets”.
Zynga: TechCrunch tirelessly chased them for weeks over alleged scammy deals via their virtual goods offers.
Result: Zynga makes more money in a day than TechCrunch makes in a year. TechCrunch gives them a Crunchie Award.
Facebook: TechCrunch hassles them for weeks over Nazi hate groups and privacy policies.
Result: More photos viewed on Facebook every second than TechCrunch has readers. TechCrunch gives them multiple Crunchie Awards.
CrunchPad: Arrington writes about his big lawsuit. He will crush them with his powerful friends!
Result: Oops we didn’t have a contract. No Crunchie for you.
Twitter: Published illegally-obtained documents including Twitter corporate board room meeting notes.
Result: It’s just Twitter. It Doesn’t Matter. Crunchie.
Video Professor: Tirelessly chased them for weeks calling them a scam. Vowed to take them down.
Result: Saw them on TV yesterday.
Oh and that little “People paying TechCrunch for news coverage” thing.
TL;DR
I can’t believe that TechCrunch still hasn’t presented a list of the dozens of companies affected by the scandal.
Let alone announced a proper investigation.
Instead we have “he wasn’t an employee and he didn’t write much” which we know isn’t true. Yet another cover-your-ass disclosure instead of facts.
Over 100 posts were removed from TechCrunch, casting doubt on the ethics of dozens of the most important companies in the technology space and the site itself.
It’s okay to talk about this stuff, to blog about it, to leave comments. It really is, and it does matter. The only thing that can hurt you is turning a blind eye to this nonsense. If all else fails, email info@1938media.com and I won’t tell Mike. But get on it crowd, I have puppet videos to make.
[...] about tech. No wonder these Web 2.0 companies make no money. RT @1938media: New post: CrunchGate http://bit.ly/ac574a Powered by Fresh From This was written by Phil. Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010, at 12:34 [...]
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This is an interesting topic with a lot of food for thought. I decided to sketch out a few thoughts of my own. I began with a couple of lines and ended up with this…
What’s interesting to me is that TechCrunch is becoming something of a figurehead for a wider public rebellion against a new era of mainstream news agency – particularly in matters of ethical conduct. Blogs, by virtue of their relatively small organisational size, are still able to implement fast structural changes to keep up with the demands of a synchronous Web. That’s partly what differentiates blogs from so-called ‘traditional’ organizations. The compromise that has yet to be fully addressed, and one that makes TechCrunch particularly vulnerable to criticism, is that despite dealing in a ‘currency’ or ‘economy’ of real-time change, the ethical framework that regulated pre-Web journalism has yet to be satisfactorily updated. I’m sure most of us recognize this, but the question of how and by whom that framework should be updated, is still a cause for contention. It raises the broader questions: what is authority in the current Web?
Staying with TechCrunch as an example, I’d be surprised to find a ratio of more than 2 in 10 posts on the site’s front page that have been subject to ‘traditional’ journalistic scrutiny, that is, involving a period of research, multiple drafts and peer review. The rest are ‘reactions’ to popular stories already in circulation and their purpose is quite clear: to generate traffic and keep the flow of content going; in other words to partake in the economy of the real-time Web. Our continual consumption of information in this economy, and our tacit acceptance of its flaws – although that acceptance is increasingly subject to criticism as per Loren’s post – fuels the high-frequency publishing paradigm, turning quantity into a signifier for a successful news outlet. High on information fever, we have forgotten that to approach a news story with any degree of ethical rigor requires time; time to read, time to think, time to write, and that’s a model the real-time Web does not facilitate. So what you get is an abundance of misread news stories. Perhaps one positive outcome is that the onus, more than ever before, is on the reader to do the groundwork. With so little information available, with such a reduced ‘narrative’, you have to connect the dots yourself to find out what the bigger picture might be. The mistrust of ‘grand narratives’ is a post-war phenomenon that has been bubbling away in most areas of critical thinking, and journalism is no different in that regard. The danger today is that too few people bother to query sources lending authority to the myriad micro-bubbles of information that float around the Web – TechCrunch included.
Continued in comment below…
I’d be very interested to see TechCrunch run a poll that asked its readers the following question:
If you had the choice, would you rather we posted 5 thoroughly researched news stories or 20 short hand ‘reactions’ (reblogs) of stories already in circulation?
In theory you’d expect most people to opt for the former, but in practice, would readers really want to give up on what is now a normative culture of instant updates? Being ‘ahead’ of the game, being first in the line, being top of the league, primacy in general is a value that’s constructed very early on in our lives and one that doesn’t seem to waver with the passing of time. Professional life, for most of us, is the proverbial struggle to the top of the pile, and if you think about the Web as it began to gain critical mass, the questions being asked early on in the last decade were not so much “how can I use these tools to do things differently?” but “how can I use these tools to better my chances?” A few of those in the former school of thought leant their minds to ‘wemedia’ type enterprises, citizen journalism, Wikipedia, Wikinomics etc., but even in the realm of the crowd-sourced, only a select few projects (the top of the pile) are able to subsist.
There’s been a lot of talk about the ‘death’ or ‘end’ of journalism in recent years prying open a pre and post disaggregated media rift and posing a threat to common understandings of media morality. Fatalistic approaches to change are unhelpful. What’s at stake is an evolution in media structures and discourses, but what’s perhaps more frustrating is not the differences per se, but the lack of time to adapt. There has to be a period of adjustment in ethical practice to meet the current speed of dissemination and decision-making. [Cf. Paul Virilio and his notion of 'dromology' or the logic of speed in relation to warfare and post-modern media]. The conundrum we face, and I read this by extrapolation of Vrilio’s dromology theorem, is that if the period of adjustment to change is more or less commensurate with the speed of change itself, we have to devise fluid strategies capable of meeting the information speed of our times.
Think Andrew’s question is a good ‘un…and the answer seems to be both. We want well-researched, thoughtful news/analysis/opinions, but we also want an all-you-can eat smorgasboard for the all the news of the day. Might be more effective though, if you’re not going to write something original, just to post the original story from wherever it breaks, and provide additional opinion/analysis vs. trying to pass it off as “your” original story. Think about how @om has repositioned GigaOm. There will always be the “fast food” vs. the 5 course meals (with a good bordeaux) of journalism.
i’ve been reading tc for over a year now religiously, and it seems like you are in the head space of tc readers. tc readers have been asking for them to submit pieces with better spelling, fact checking, less reguirtitating, and more journalism, but apparently they are bloggers and others who have other professions or come from other careers that is significant for tech reporting. tc readers have been asking for less fluff and drivel and more diversity on the companies covered. tc readers have asked for and gotten a little bit for more diversity on the main tc.com site or front page incorporating crunchgear, tceurope and actual posts people give a fuck about. but although the readers are the one’s who make the site popular (minus the drama), make the site informative with their comments (not the circle jerk and anons that disrup the section. often times the commenters are the one providing the writers with the appropriate information, tip, along with all their correctionst), and seem to fall over arrington, it seems like they really like the space that tc fills. as if like there aren’t other blogs doing what tc is doing to that high or low of quality. you would think that maybe at some point they will listen to their readers and move forward instead of staying stagnant.
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