Here's to You Mr(s) Arrington, Goodbye and Good Luck Startups
It's ironic that 1 year ago today I resigned from Techcrunch following my Le Web 3 review on TCUK. Mike Arrington, the publisher of Techcrunch, has never forgiven me for that post and the aftermath that followed.
Context & Ripple Effects
The timing is deliberate: exactly one year earlier, TechCrunch UK was put on hold after the fallout from the writer's Le Web 3 review, which ended with their resignation from TechCrunch and a move to blognation. The anniversary post frames that split as unresolved — the writer states plainly that Mike Arrington has never forgiven the review or its aftermath.
The grudge claim sits inside a broader pattern the corpus already documents: by September 2007, Bits was examining how much editorial ground Arrington shares with his writers, and back in July 2006 commentary had already questioned why Marshall Kirkpatrick occupied so visible an editorial post under him. Personal control of the masthead is the running theme, and this farewell is its sharpest data point yet.
First-order effects
- The departing writer exits startup coverage entirely — the 'goodbye' is to the beat as well as to TechCrunch — leaving blognation without the TCUK voice that once anchored its UK presence.
Second-order effects
- TechCrunch's UK expansion stays shelved indefinitely, since the only writer who ran TCUK is now publishing elsewhere and publicly airing the dispute.
Third-order effects
- If founder-held grudges keep deciding who writes where, independent tech blogging consolidates around personalities rather than publications — the dynamic the 2006 Kirkpatrick question and the 2007 'pulpit' piece both circled.
The trend: Founder-controlled tech blogs are concentrating editorial power in one person's hands, with writer departures becoming the visible cost of that model.