Michael Arrington: “I’m a Click-Whoring Jackass” | Hacker News Reader

Michael Arrington: “I’m a Click-Whoring Jackass”

theangrydrunk.com

103 pointsraganwald36 comments

I stopped taking TechCrunch seriously a long time ago.

Absolutely no journalistic integrity.. even for blogging standards.

While I agree with the critic, I'd also point out that at no point did blogs magically become bona-fide news outlets. Sure, some are, but being a BLOG doesn't make it journalism, the writing does. I view Techcrunch as more of a Op-Ed column.

It would be a pretty easy argument to suggest that some blogs became bona-fide news outlets when people started to use them as their primary source of news.

I don't read newspapers anymore. I get 90% of my news from blogs.

TechCrunch has a presence that suggests they are a reputable source of information, and most of the articles there suggest the same. But every once in a while, Michael Arrington throws a strange, opinionated and arguably unprofessional article into the mix.

This article is itself about as lightweight a piece of linkbait as I've ever seen here.

In that case, why not remove it from HN? If posts aren't contributing positively to the site, please apply moderation (in moderation, of course)!

And yet, I agree with the author, and upvoting it made me feel good.

If you upvote merely to agree, everyone else gets a boring reading list.

I have a strong feeling upmod/downmod is broken as a mechanism for guageing the "interesting-ness" of web posts. It seems that everyone agrees that the community "ought to" upmod valuable things and downmod useless things independantly of whether each person agrees or disagrees with the basic premise, however what I observe is that the more emotionally invested someone is in an issue, the further they stray from the utopian ideal.

The problem is overloading a tiny 1-dimensional 'grunt' of a feedback mechanism. (Or really, half-a-dimension, when only upvotes are allowed.) It's aggravated by the fact the exact same up-arrow is an approved way to agree with a comment. [1]

My suggestion when this problem has come up previously: adopt a 2-axis feedback mechanism, with up-down meaning promote-demote (give something more/less attention), and right-left meaning agree-disagree. [2] [3]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117196

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126917

The Boston Globe has started including something similar to that in its print newspaper: they have a 2D scatterplot under the Letters to the Editor where the y-axis is the number of letters on each topic and the x-axis is whether the letters were in favor or opposed. It's a nifty at-a-glance visualization.

Fight fire with fire. Arrington is now on WaPo and is widely read as a quasi-reliable source of tech journalism - this is from a blog called "angry drunk." Everything has a time and place.

I'm actually surprised we didnt see a little more blowback from that post. It seems TC has been getting progressively more opinionated and biased as of late...

But you get what you pay for.

But you get what you pay for.

I'm not even sure TechCrunch deserves that generous evaluation. Typically I feel dumber after reading a TC link.

Judging by his recent posts, it seems like Mr. Arrington is now on Microsoft's payroll. His pro-Microsoft bias is not just evident, it is verging on an edge of outright lies. It is also very annoying.

In fact, I have stopped reading Arrington's posts altogether and funny enough TC still reads exactly as it did few months ago.

He's on Microsoft's payroll but he's a Mac guy?

Say what you want about the man but, but I think he does a good job balancing his opinion with the facts.

Microsoft makes software for Macs too, you know. In fact, Microsoft has a Mac business unit.

Please lets not turn Hacker News into a microphone to talk to TechCrunch.

MA is a true believer in hypes. Can't you see that he is actually enjoying starting link baiting with exaggerating titles? The more bias he is, more ppl visits and comments, and more page view to claim. If you have commented, the chances that you are going back is higher, isn't it?

I think everyone is being a bit too hard on Michael Arrington. Most of the time his articles are well written and insightful. To take just one piece he wrote and discount him and TC completely just because of the misuse of quotation marks is a bit over the top.

Good thing we banned Valleywag.

I actually like that Arrington is expressing opinion in his articles... the other authors on his staff mostly give the news in black and white. When Michael writes, at least it has an op-ed type feel to it and gets you thinking (whether or not you agree with him is a totally a different matter!).

If he provokes some useful thought for you, terrific.

That being said... the post zeroes in on a question of integrity: Quoting someone means they said what you quoted. Don't you think Arrington could give you an op-ed opinion without misrepresenting the subject?

Don't you think Arrington could give you an op-ed opinion without misrepresenting the subject?

Judging by recent events, I'm going to have to say "No".

This is standard operating procedure at many social news sites. People are constantly making quotes out of some idea they've inferred from an article. I'd say that puts Arrington at about the level of a particularly slimy Digg or Reddit submitter. That said, it's a serious problem that the social sites don't crack down on enough. Submitters who engage in such practices should simply be banned as soon as it is discovered that a quote in their title is made up.

The blog title and post itself is click-whoring.

isn't that the point?

techcrunch, the sideshow of valleywag.

I have to agree it was a great liberty taken by Micheal, on the other hand its his business and he can do what he feels he has to in order for it to prosper.

I don't agree. In order to prosper, you may do what you feel you have to, but you should have at least some integrity, for example, you should not lie, especially when you are trying to be a reporter of news. (Why he was lying is explained in the blog post).

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