I've had literally hundreds of interactions with MA and I believe he's fundamentally an OK guy. He's irascible, yes, but when he's harsh to someone it's not part of a calculated strategy to keep everyone in line. It's simply because he's mad.
IMO, the true test of a man's character is not how he behaves with his friends and peers, but how he behaves towards those with less power. Arrington's behavior makes me wonder.
To be fair, he has every reason not to piss you off. I found the Caterina Fake situation peculiar at best, and the GroupMe scenario (which I'm just reading about now) is really not cool.
"But there’s always the risk of winding up afoul of Arrington’s rules of the road. That’s what GroupMe did last month with news of a major acquisition. Arrington’s response was classic Tony Soprano. Speaking at a CEO summit in New York, he berated a GroupMe executive in the audience. “You fucked me over,” Mike said from the podium. He told everyone GroupMe was now cut off from his site, and threatened to do the same to anyone else who doesn’t let him dictate their press coverage."
Whether rumor mongering is designed to have a chilling effect or not is nearly irrelevant as to whether or not it happens. Further, while I value others' personal opinions of him, looking at the data of the Caterina Fake article and the GroupMe comments it's hard not to come to the conclusion of the chilling effect being designed.
Even beyond that, it's more than just venting anger. The rumor mongering in the Caterina article is just plain being an ass.
Well, if you had your interestes aligned to Hitler's, I am sure he would seem a nice guy too. Apparently he was very loving to his dog.
We tend to see people's worst side when they are feeling uncomfortable. I can't see how he's "coverage" of Catarina Fake makes him an OK guy. It's like the wife beating husband who's great when on a good mood.
He may very well be a nice guy, but as a journalist his behavior is pretty questionable. It isn't as if the Caterina Fake incident is the first. He's a professional, he ought to behave like one.
I wonder how AOL feels about the acquisition these days? I've talked with a lot of people recently who feel that the "tech blogging" space is ripe for disruption ...
The minute that everyone feels that a space is locked up is the perfect time to get started. I think there's plenty of room to start a tech site at this point, the trick is to do something new and not reinvent the wheel.
How common in the press and PR industry is the "exclusive"?
For UK national newspapers, an exclusive might be done for a front page, or page 2, 3, 5, story, but that's probably the exception not the norm.
Now in magazines, I suspect exclusivity is the norm, you want something special for your readers, you don't want something that was in a competitor last month, or will be in more detail with better pictures in a months time.
What ever happened to a good old press release and schmoozing one or two journos to cover it with decent background material - or is this just the logical conclusion of that in Silicon Valley?
I personally think that most rational people could see the article as unprofessional and that MA kind of dug his own grave there. It just seems slightly ironic to me that she used her blog to attack him for writing an attack blog post.
She is definitely using this attack to get attention for her own company. At least we now know that her PR firm will not be able to feature you on techcrunch.
Ok, I laughed out loud, its Mike Arrington's Hollywood moment perhaps.
Vanessa is complaining that Mike Arrington is mean. Seriously? I could not help but think I was reading something from the Hollywood Reporter rather than something technical. You don't like Techcrunch? Fine. Why the ad hominem on MA? That sounds like something a bit more personal but its not technology news.
