TechCrunch

Strip the concept of "quality journalism" down to its barest of bones, and you'll find something that informs readers and affects change. It's a pretty high bar that even the most entrenched and respected publications struggle to reach consistently.

Which is why TechCrunch deserves commendation.

Sure, it's just a blog. And sure, it's primarily built around items like comparing the iPhone to the Droid. But give founder Michael Arrington this much: when he sees something he doesn't like that falls under his sphere of influence, he goes after it.

We're referring specifically to the prevalence of advertising scams that prey on less-savvy users across social gaming networks on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. TechCrunch describes one scam as surreptitiously assigning costly monthly subscriptions to users who merely register to receive the results of an online IQ "test" they've taken. Another offers a free learning CD for a $10 shipping charge, then sends an entire set of CDs for which it charges $189.95, unless the set is returned (which, most often, it isn't, owing to the fact that users aren't aware of the extra fee).

Schemes like these lure users with offers of virtual currency in exchange for participation.

Social games are in TechCrunch's wheelhouse. Arrington -- a noted hothead who has himself been accused of questionable journalism practices -- was unequivocal about taking action. Instead of writing an editorial and leaving it at that, he went to the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco and challenged Offerpal founder CEO Anu Shukla (whose company is one of the leaders of this particular industry) on the concept, face to face, in a public forum. (See video of the exchange below.)

He wrote an article. He wrote another article. And another and another and another.

And, like the best journalism in any medium, it seems to be working.

Last week, Shukla was replaced; Offerpal's new CEO says that his company is shooting toward the straight and narrow.

Zynga CEO Mark Pinkus (whose company, wrote Arrington, is the "worst of the offenders") pledged to tamp down on such activity. To keep him honest, today TechCrunch posted a video clip from last year in which Pinkus admits to basing his company's business plan on scamming customers.

Best of all, Facebook itself -- which, said Arrington, while not active in the scams, enjoyed huge financial benefits from them and would have been hard-pressed to overlook their existence on its site -- has said it will step up enforcement of its anti-scam rules. MySpace made a similar statement.

While this sort of action deserves the highest degree of applause, there's one more barrier Arrington managed to cross with this particular crusade. He runs a blog. It's big and it's professional and it's well-respected, but in the landscape of American media, it's still "just" a blog, covering a fringe segment of society.

Today, based on Arrington's legwork, Time picked up the torch. Seems like people are paying attention.

A year ago, TechCrunch said they were ditching one of the most sacrosanct of journalism practices: the honoring of embargoes.

Now editor Michael Arrington is declaring embargoes officially dead for the media in general.

The trigger? Another site, PaidContent, apparently broke Google's embargo this week on announcing its new SideWiki feature.

"A year ago embargo breaks were rare, once-a-month things," Arrington writes on TechCrunch. "Today, nearly every embargo is broken, sometimes by a few minutes, sometimes by half a day or more."

The source of the problem, according to Arrington? Not greedy, scoop-seeking journalists. The problem, he says, are PR companies themselves.

Stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn't used to be this way, but it's becoming more and more of a problem.

As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.

TechCrunch clearly has mixed feelings about its own event. TechCrunch50 dominated tech coverage this week (including here on BayNewser), earning a massive amount of attention for the startups it spotlighted.

Now, in the space of seven posts on the site, TechCrunch ran a self-congratulatory message (along with a comprehensive list of links to everything associated with the conference), and another post that essentially called the event boring because the companies at the heart of it were playing it too safe.

Kudos to TechCrunch for keeping it real. Clearly, these posts aren't all passing through some sort of corporate filter designed to make the company look as good as possible. Contrasting though they may be, both messages are valid. It's the kind of stuff that makes for good coverage, no matter the topic at hand.

For those who hoped coverage of TechCrunch 50 would never end, this has to be bittersweet. Shortly after wrapping up the third installment of their conference that puts the spotlight on startups, event heads Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis have apparently reached some discord.

The blogosphere is all a-twitter over an alleged fight between the two, which Calacanis has done nothing to dispel. To the contrary, he tweeted that this would be the last TechCrunch 50, and made two videos with puppeteer/humorist Loren Feldman (below), during the course of which he said, "I can tell you that this is the last TechCrunch50" (The puppet serves merely as a conversation partner in the first video; in the second he wears a shirt and claims to be Arrington.)

Arrington didn't deny the details in a Valleywag report, saying "I'm not going to say I didn't have words with him because I have words with people all the time." He did avoid the event's final presentation of a TechCrunch 50 award to startup company RedBeacon, leaving Calacanis to do the duties solo. (Calacanis led the crowd in calling for Arrington, to no avail.)

VentureBeat reported rumors that the split stems from the profit-sharing terms of their partnership.

Our take: The best part about this -- and any -- dustup is the details, of which there are currently precious few (outside of the random puppet video). This is all essentially a bunch of hot air that will soon cool. TechCrunch50 will take place again next year, even if it's called something else and even if Arrington goes it alone.

In the meantime, we'll just sit back and wait to hear what really happened.

Video 1, with plain puppet

Video 2, with Arrington puppet

It's pretty hard to win against TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington because no matter what you say about him or do to him, he has a megaphone most people don't have and is never shy about using it to present his side. And no matter how you feel about the guy personally, the fact is that he's a pretty smart cookie and not embarrassed to lay everthing out, which means his posts usually come across as fairly reasonable.

Take the latest kerfuffle. According to a post on CrunchNotes this morning, former TechCrunch UK editor Sanjiv "Sam" Sethi is trumpeting in private communications the fact that he just "won" his libel lawsuit against Arrington et al. So Arrington got on his megaphone to set the record straight.

To backtrack: In June, Sethi decided to sue Arrington and TechCrunch for libel for all sorts of unpleasant things Arrington said about him after the two parted ways (see details in this post). The suit was filed in a British court. Arrington, for reasons described in his post this morning, decided not to engage with the suit. As a result, the court Thursday ruled in favor of Sethi and ordered Arrington et al to pay damages and legal costs.

In response to Sethi's alleged claims to victory, Arrington is hitting back, saying Sethi won nothing. TechCrunch decided not to fight the case because a) it would be ridiculously expensive to defend it, even though UK attorneys advised them they would probably win, and b) they believe the proper jurisdiction for such claims in California. In other words, if Sethi wants to file suit here, TechCrunch would be happy to play ball.

So, from our vantage, Arrington has won the war of words. Sadly for him, however, he's sacrificed his ability to travel to England. Given that TechCrunch is planning to ignore the ruling and pay nothing to Sethi, Arrington would likely be arrested, should he travel to England.

That probably wasn't the justice Sethi was seeking. Nevertheless, we'll put the score for this match at love all.

Photo: Joi Ito

So Charlie Rose had TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington on his program last week. After they got done talking about Bing and Google and the iPhone and the Crunchpad, Rose finally broached the topic of the hacker-stolen Twitter documents.

Much of the ground they covered was familiar: how the hacker approached TechCrunch, what was in the documents, etc, etc.

But what was new was their exchange about the real-time discussion that took place in the media and tech worlds about whether TechCrunch should even publish the documents.

Arrington: [T]he interesting thing to me wasn't the—the documents were fascinating. The interesting thing to me was the discussion that was generated around whether we should publish them or not. And there are people that have come out, major journalists who have come out said it was unethical for us to do this. And there were journalists who had come out and said it was absolutely fine and ethical for them to do this. In fact, their readers deserve that kind of access.

And obviously I have an opinion because I'm in the middle of the
story, but just taking myself out of it, I think it's a fascinating
discussion, because I know in the old days, when the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal got documents like this, they weren't—they didn't have that discussion with the readers.

Rose: It's interesting how you did it, you know, engaging your community.

After the jump, why Arrington went ahead and published the documents, even though the majority of his readers were against it.

continued...

Ever since news broke Tuesday night that TechCrunch had received a slew of hacker-stolen confidential Twitter documents, tech and journalism circles have been abuzz about whether Michael Arrington should have gone ahead and published what he received.

We'll leave the question of journalistic ethics to smarter (and more passionate) interlocuteurs. As for the legal issue—whether TechCrunch could be prosecuted—Sam Bayard at the Citizen Media Law Project has published a post today saying he thinks TechCrunch's actions so far are protected by the First Amendment.

To recap: TechCrunch received 310 documents that a hacker had stolen from Twitter. They included everything from growth projectionss to job applicant resumes to personal credit card numbers. TechCrunch went public with the receipt Tuesday night, saying it planned to publish some of the information. So far, it has only published a pitch for a Twitter reality show and the company's financial forecast.

Bayard says there are three potential criminal issues at issue: trade secret misappropriation, invasion of privacy, and receipt of stolen goods. All of these, however, are subject to First Amendment protections, he says. Specifically, "truthful speech" is protected on "matters of public concern."

Which then begs the question: Does the information that TechCrunch has published so far constitute matters of public concerns?

Financial projections? Probably, says Bayard, given Twitter's "immense popularity and newfound cultural significance." Reality show pitch? Not as clear-cut a case, but "still probably falls on the safe side of the line," particularly because, as Bayard explains, "the courts are rightly hesitant to decide for themselves what is newsworthy and what is not, so they tend to err on the side of liberality."

So there you go.

(H/t Robert Scoble)

UPDATE: Arrington just published Twitter's internal strategy. Not sure how that changes the game, if at all.

Sports promoters know that one of the keys to squeezing every last dollar out of an event is to make sure all blank surfaces are covered with some advertiser's logo.

TechCrunch has apparently taken notice.

There's a lot of empty space in their office, which is now being captured live on the new CrunchCam and broadcast out on to the Internets 24/7. So what's a savvy entreprenuer who wouldn't mind having a few extra dollars around for their Do Not Disturb signs, legal defense funds, and lifetime supplies of Purel to do? Set up a whiteboard and sell ad space.

The CrunchCam launched May 6. So far, ad takers have included BeetTV, IMailServer, NightlifeNetwork, Black Band Project, MatterMeter, and Contenture.

OK, great, you say. That's all fine and dandy. But who's going to spend any time actually watching the CrunchCam?

Well, people who love dogs, for one. Someone in the office has an adorable black lab which is apparently allowed to come to work. And, um.... well, that's not the point. The point is that these folks are thinking. And experimenting. And gosh dang it, BayNewser applauds them just throwing it up against the wall and seeing what sticks.