Arrington on Twittergate: “I wouldn't do things any differently”
As a reporter who blogs — and who has been competing against Michael Arrington for the past couple of years — I've been helplessly fascinated by the Twittergate debate of the last couple of weeks.
Context & Ripple Effects
Michael Arrington has spent two years converting a startup blog into personal media power: Wired documented his ability to generate both buzz and cash back in 2007, and by December 2008 profiles were framing him outright as a media mogul in the making. That arc is what makes the Twittergate debate more than gossip — the man at its center is simultaneously a publisher, an investor, and a subject of his own outlet's coverage.
The controversy sharpened in mid-July, when celebrity accounts were retweeting odd content purportedly posted by them and criticism mounted over Arrington's blogging about porn. His public stance this week — he would not do things any differently — comes from a founder whose brand has always been that the rules of old media don't apply to him.
First-order effects
- Arrington's refusal to walk anything back keeps the conflict-of-interest question attached to TechCrunch's news operation itself: every scoop it publishes now carries the question of how closely its editor stands to the people covered.
- Rival bloggers — including competitors like the VentureBeat author writing this piece — get an open lane to cover the ethics debate instead of competing for scoops, shifting attention toward who reports cleanly rather than who reports first.
Second-order effects
- Startups and PR shops deciding where to place exclusives face a changed calculus: TechCrunch's reach remains unmatched since its 2005 founding, but the Twittergate fight hands smaller rivals a credibility argument to use in pitches.
- Other blogger-led outlets now have to decide whether to adopt explicit disclosure practices or defend the same freewheeling model, because Arrington's doubling-down sets the reference point any critic will hold them to.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — influential blogger-publishers absorbing sustained criticism without changing behavior — the pressure moves from individuals toward industry norms: formalized disclosure standards for outlets where the reporter, investor, and protagonist are the same person.
- The episode is an early test of whether personality-driven new media can scale past the point where old-media institutions would have imposed an editor's firewall; the answer will shape how the next wave of tech publishers structures themselves.
The trend: New-media publishers built on individual personality are colliding with the accountability structures traditional outlets used to absorb, and each refusal to bend raises the stakes for whoever runs the next influential blog.