For me, this is another reason why I feel like TC is dying. Posts seem to be getting more and more negative (lay-offs, this, etc), less about start-ups, and simply turning into a personal rant platform. Not sure if this is the reason, but something is causing traffic to slip over the past few months.
Anyway, if I were to launch something, I would not prefer to have my product story nestled between a piece about Yahoo layoffs, and a rant about PR (sorry AllFacebook, in this case).
Startups are just getting less interesting. Blogs in general would not be down, as they are a cheaper form of entertainment, which should be on the rise in a bad economy.
everything interesting has been done to death. Now the only innovation(and I don't mean ____ + ____ mashup) will come from companies with a ton of money to spend on research.
everything that can be invented in the garage has been invented, now its getting to the point where any real technology needs a ton of R&D just to move forward
All the big tech blogs now suck. Except for Uncov.com, which rocks, and they aren't big. Actually I like Valleywag too, just because they're the only ones not circle jerking with the others.
True, newspapers are having a hard time. However, I would still rather give my "exclusive" to the new york times.
I guess I'm just trying to say that TC is doing something wrong, and hypothesizing it is articles like this. If I was TC and saw this graph, I would be worried!
I've been annoyed by TC lately, but this step is something I applaud. Cutting out bullshit is always good in my book.
I remember CNet doing a story an year ago, complaining how they were screwed by blogs that didn't honor embargoes. Big news outlets break those, too (ABC did, for example). And nobody really wins from an embargo (except PR companies), so I don't see the hurt.
At first glance it seems like an good thing, but as Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb) points out in the comments, TC says they will still honor embargoes if they get the exclusive. This gives companies the incentive to give TC an exclusive.
Exactly. I also remember reading allegations (on news.yc, I think?) that TC has refused to run stories because they weren't contacted before their competitors.
The motive seems to be to give TC every possible advantage. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I don't know if there's anything worth applauding.
Edit: just had a thought. If TC is going to (openly) start lying about respecting embargoes, what's to stop sources from lying about giving TC exclusivity?
If another site runs the story first then TC can choose not to run it themselves. And they can immediately reject any stories from a company that lied to them in the past.
Of course, companies and PR firms can choose to not bother with TC, but they're the 800 pound gorilla of the tech media. But would four 200 pound gorillas be better than one 800 pound gorilla?
Really a Gorilla game. Seems like PR firms & outlets hate each other & need each other. What's to stop outlets screwing PR companies? They stop working with them. What's to stop PR companies screwing outlets? Not working with them.
It makes sense to threaten retaliation but actual retaliation does not. At least not without Robert Aumann weighing in.
I actually find it be laziness. There different calibers of PR firms that I spoke with that say they ignore TC altogether because of the horrible type of traffic they have -- as in, mostly international, mostly incompatible with their client's need, mostly RSS readers, and mostly non-convertible. They rather go on the hunt of finding the right writers in the right fields/markets to get them to prep for a story.
If your PR firm's first, second, or even third, suggestion for you is to pitch to the biggest tech blog: fire them.
Oops sorry, I think alaskamiller's comment was in response to mine, which I deleted because it was a duplicate of ph0rque's, then re-added because ph0rque edited his to reference mine.
> If TC is going to (openly) start lying about respecting embargoes, what's to stop sources from lying about giving TC exclusivity?
A startup could do it once before going on Arrington's black list, I suppose... although you'd have to get TC's competitors to agree to embargo the "exclusive" post until TC does theirs.
One "loophole", which only applies to sites that haven't launched, is to tell the writers when the site goes live. Chances are they won't run a story before the site is live.
It effectively creates an embargo that can't be broken.
All these tech "blogs" -- TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, Mashable -- operate with real budget and hire real people who rely on real paychecks to go through the weeks. When you're playing with real money, it's not time or place to fuck around.
When I was working at a big blog, the major takeaway I got was that everyone will be engaging in an inevitable attrition war. And in that war, many will pull some crazy shit to get to the top. The sites themselves need to continuously generate pageviews day after day. They need to posture and project that they're more and more influential. The biggest offender, consistently, has been TechCrunch. They publish stuff that has explicit no publish requests, they break embargoes that hinders around real businesses' launch times, and they censure over petty beef with another tech blog.
Oh, don't forget the fact that TechCrunch is no longer about startups -- it's the new CNet, without the class and without the journalistic integrity.
Valleywag has no class what so ever. It's sleazy and happily so.
However they do have integrity. Paul Boutin's a real journalist. They, and I'd argue most of the Gawker writers, bring an outsiders view of the world to their coverage that's sorely lacking in a lot of the news. Deadspin's the same story. It's sleazy, low-grade and base. However they are honest and very serious about their facts.
What you choose to cover makes you "classy" or not. That's a genre.
How you cover it shows whether or not you've got integrity.
Also, while I admire what Arrington has done with TC to no end. I have to point out that whenever you question his journalistic integrity, his response is to duck the question and say he's not a journalist, he's a blogger. Meh.
When Valleywag (Owen) published an unsubstantiated rumor that Matt Mullenweg was cheating on Glenda, that wasn't lack of class. That was malicious disregard for the truth, unless Owen knew it was false, in which case it was outright lying. Integrity excludes malicious disregard for the truth.
Yeah. I was wondering if you were serious or just playing devil's advocate. Apparently at least 16 people thought your semantic swordsmanship passed for a real defense :-)
Well I was serious. I've no way of knowing exactly how many times VWag burned people, but they're at least going after people in a way that few are. Like I said, its sleazy and low, but they're going after people, not puffing up their buddies projects and shrugging their shoulders when people complain.
Valleywag does have more integrity than TC. At least they post honest reviews of companies, instead of fluffing up miserable companies. For an example of this, check out the coverage TC (and nearly every other tech blog) gave to Mahalo Answers. Lame service, yet they are out there touting like an innovation because Mike and JC are friends and business partners.
For what it's worth -- having worked on the flipside -- Valleywag did uphold journalistic integrity to a better degree.
VW protected and respected the wishes of the sources, fact-checked as much as we could with multiple sources -- it was especially hilarious watching people blame VW on this to try to get away with their bullshit, and respect amongst the other writers in the industry.
I would suggest you try working for them for awhile but, meh, it doesn't really matter.
About Valley Wag respecting the wishes of the sources and fact-checking multiple sources. Not so much in my case.
I wrote a comment here on HN about the Yahoo/Microsoft merger based on a conversation I had with a friend that worked at Yahoo. I made the mistake of posting some identifiable information about my friend.
Valley Wag picked up my 7 line comment, and turned it in to two separate stories on the Yahoo/Microsoft merger. They sourced one article to my comment, and included identifiable information about my friend. The second article did some "analysis" and speculation based on the information obtained in the first article.
I was worried that my fried would get laid off, so I wrote Valley Wag and politely asked them to remove identifiable information about my friend.
I was stunned by the nastiness in response from Valley Wag. I was told that I maybe I should think before I post on HN, and they had the freedom of speech to post whatever they wanted, etc... It was my mistake that I posted the information, and if my friend lost his job because of what I said, it was my fault.
PG was nice enough to edit the identifying information out of my comment. My friend did indeed get a pink slip, although I don't think it had anything to do with the Valley Wag stuff. And Valley Wag stories got banned here a few months later.
@alaskamiller: My interactions weren't with you. So, no hard feelings. Next one is on me at Hackers and Founders. :)
I'm trying to recall that particular incident. Was it Paul Boutin that wrote it? I should drag myself away from the desk and show up for those H&F meetups again soon. We'll chat about it.
There's more to integrity than fact-checking. Valleywag built an audience on insults, gossip and scandal. I would not call that a great example of integrity.
Considering the publisher kept insisting it was a gossip rag that happened to have on board legit journalists that switched in and out of writing gossip, blind items, and poignant analysis... I'm not sure what to tell you.
NYT, WaPo, and even CNN have considerably more class and integrity than CNet, IMHO -- and outside the media world, there are many organizations of 2000+ people I have more respect for.
Startups should not be using PR firms anyway. Talk to them normally, build a relationship, see them in conferences, act human. That works, really. We haven't spent a cent on PR, and have done just fine and got all the coverage we could have asked for.
I think its such a shame when the founders are evangelizing and spreading the word. That's where all the passion is, and it comes through. When it comes filtered through PR, you lose that excitement and buzz.
I think that's kind of a naive outlook. Bigger startups -- moronic sounding, yes -- can utilize PR firms to for effectiveness and efficiency. It's basically outsourcing whoever guy you put on "building relationships" and "encouraging press" to a professional firm instead of getting someone to bumble around with it.
I personally like all the writers at TC having worked with most of them in the past. They never broke an embargo and we're quick to response to any requests i had. The same can't be said for #%@&*& (name redacted to protect the guilty).
You just have to be clever and give each blog a different angle to cover. You also have to approach different blogs every now and then rather hitting up the same source each time.
Theres a thousand other things fighting for my attention online. If Techcrunch can't keep it then I'll go elsewhere, its simple as that. Will this change things? Probably not. I don't think the average readers care about exclusives or getting news the minute it happens.
Techcrunch, recently, has simply not been worth more then skimming headlines for something that stands out. (1 in 10?)
You should create a single serving site at howmanystoriesstandoutontechcrunch and just post the number each day. They'd link to you for sure.
Heck. Maybe there's a spot for a tech news site that just posts a single link each day to the one story worth reading. No archives. Just one story each day, Drudge-style.
I don't really see why people care that much about techcrunch. Granted I'm just a regular hacker, not doing startup, not having any plans to do so, and generally care very little about startup news.
I just want interesting technews. Give me links to some new awesome tech, with demos or videos showcasing why I should be awed. Give me links to new awesome tech which makes my life simpler. Give me links to fancy programming tricks which while technically awesome or impressive, would never survive a code-review. Give me stuff that feeds the hacker in me.
In that respect techcrunch has generally been of very little interest to me, and lately I haven't even bothered reading stories from techcrunch at all.
Is the focus on techcrunch around here (because I see noone else on the web caring) because it has historically been PR friendly to startups?
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/techcrunch.com/?metric=uv
Anyway, if I were to launch something, I would not prefer to have my product story nestled between a piece about Yahoo layoffs, and a rant about PR (sorry AllFacebook, in this case).