In recent days a debate has surfaced on the ethics of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his new fund for start-up companies. The specific issue: How can Arrington continue to write for TechCrunch (now owned by AOL) when he has venture capital (some of it AOL's) in the mix.

As it turns out, he has gone to the sidelines.

But the handling of his case and its implications have stirred a healthy discussion in the craft about conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, and whether there are new boundaries emerging of acceptable practice. In the midst of this, the head of AOL has suggested TechCrunch might have had different standards than its journalistic outlets.

The latest to weigh in is the media columnist for the New York Times, David Carr, whose writing today is withering on most everyone involved. Carr mainly registers disbelief the situation got this far, but he identifies the central problems for journalism as it deals with new challenges in reporting on technology.
 
 
For a few weeks, the CEO of TechCrunch has been embroiled in a debate on how he ought to declare conflicts as he writes for and manages one of the leading websites on technology writing.
 
Michael Arrington has recently resumed his investments, which has drawn some criticism in the tech writing community. His policy is to declare these conflicts as they arise. His view is that declaration carries with it the necessary transparency to steer readers clear of conflicted content about which they would be unaware.

He posted recently on his investment policy and now has posted again on the fallout from the criticism. He asserts there is no such thing as objectivity and that the better policy is to declare conflicts rather than police them without the audience's understanding.

His view is increasingly shared as more experts involve themselves in journalism. They are conflicted by virtue of past involvement in companies or activities and they would prefer to continue to have associations or investments as they contribute journalism. Their solution is to declare conflicts and let the readers decide if their work can be trusted.

What are your views of how conflicts should be policed and declared in this increasingly complex time?
1 Comment
 
 
In a post on his TechCrunch site, Michael Arrington asserts that we need to know the opinions of journalists on the subjects they cover, and that once we do, we ought to consider their expressions healthy because they are transparent.

"I'm dismayed to see journalists continue to be punished, even fired, for expressing their opinions on the things they cover," he starts.

Objectivity is just a lie, Arrington argues. Journalists use the pretext of objectivity to build credibility and the public shouldn't buy it. Rather, he says, understanding bias permits an understanding of content in context.

"We need more opinion in news, not less," he suggests.

Arrington makes an age-old assertion: Every choice a journalist makes is a subjective one. But he places his argument in the context of a changed media broadened immensely by access to tht technology of production and distribution.

The conventional wisdom today is that the line between opinion and reportage has blurred, in part because of a widening of the supply of content and creators, and in part because commentary is an effective form of communication that draws an audience.

He would rather we know what people think, not just think about what they say.
2 Comments
 
 
He refers to the impending era as the end of the hand-crafted content. Michael Arrington, one of the principals of TechCrunch, believes there is a race to the bottom coming online and that entities spending time and money on their content are going to be run out of business.

His latest post is a sombre one, indeed. He decries the arrival of a lot of cheap media outlets that will steal content and traffic from those who invest in better work, then force-feed through portals and search engines.

As he sees it: "My advice to readers is just this – get ready for it, because you’ll be reading McDonalds five times a day in the near future. My advice to content creators is more subtle. Figure out an even more disruptive way to win, or die. Or just give up on making money doing what you do."
 
 
 

Techcrunch crunches some numbers today and concludes that online video is hardly the revenue stream once thought --- more like a trickle than a full-flowing river of gold. Audience is large and getting larger, supply is vast and getting more so, but the advertising accompanying the surge isn't really accompanying the surge. Analog dollars into digital pennies, as one network executive calls it. Sounds like a familiar refrain. Print experiences the same ratio of about 10:1 in revenue for conventional and new media distribution of the same content.

 
 

Techcrunch features a largely laudatory piece on Critical Media and its Syndicaster service, which ought to send shivers down the spines of the countless editing suite technicians.
It essentially creates Web-ready files from broadcast clips in a matter of a minute or so, quite an advance over the techniques that now use tens of thousands of dollars in gear. In the same way newspapers are outsourcing some functions, could this be the next move for TV?

 
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