Turning Down TechCrunch

The really inspirational part, to me, is the follow-through. A lot of people pay lip service to openness, but very few actually commit to it. I really love the idea behind Gittip, but I'm even more impressed with the way they're doing it.

Yeah, a limited-time embargo would seem reasonable.

As I understand it, part of the point of Gittip's policy of openness is that there are no scoops. Scoops occur when only one party has important information (usually that someone else would rather keep hidden), and that's not supposed to happen.

  I don't think taking the other party's needs into account when running
  a business is necessarily bending your principles.

This sentence is sufficiently vague as to be basically content-free. Of course any given action on the part of gittip isn't "necessarily" bending their principles, until it is. Here, if Techcrunch's "needs" include having a scoop, then accommodating that need would bend their principles. QED.

And hey, the whole thing got them on the front page of HN. It's not the first time. It may be working.

If reporting a 'scoop' was the only kind of valid journalism then I might agree with you, but it isn't and the fact that TC relies on that form of journalism so heavily is reflective of their shortcomings rather than issues or barriers for Gittip.

Journalism is also about providing a narrative that provides the reader deeper understanding of a topic in question. There's easily space for that kind of journalism to exist in conjunction with the raw data of individual conversations that take place to generate that narrative. In the same way that data journalism takes data available to anyone and makes it palatable I would expect the same could easily be done in this case if the journalist felt the story was engaging enough.

The thing about techcrunch's response is that the guy doesn't even try to make something work. If Ycombinator and other start ups decided to stop doing anything with techcrunch it would be over. Obviously TC has clout, but that doesn't mean they should piss in the well and ignore a great story. They should have capitalized on the fact that Chad stuck to his guns and seen if they could make it work. The could have posted the video themselves and tried to be innovative. Instead they wasted his time and treated him poorly.

Gittip is a great concept and Chad has done an amazing job building community based on the ideals of the community. He has created something that has value. I'm glad Techcrunch doesn't get to leach off his innovation and creativity.

Nyah, I love what this guy did and how he's sticking to his principles. It's smart too: his approach itself becomes newsworthy vs. swimming with the rest of the fish.

Classy way to hande the TC reply too. It was clearly a d--k response, but he didn't even comment on it. Just put it out there (in the spirit of openness) to let others draw their own conclusions about the way TC handled it.

TechCrunch's relevance has long been on the decline anyway. Soon enough they'll be begging for stories.

I agree. TechCrunch has jumped the shark a long time ago, and uses the weight of its name to focus on articles that have high pageviews. This reflects extremely poorly on TC -- the TC author could've easily agreed to the open call and participated in the open initiative OP feels strongly about.

Transparency is one of those things where more is always better.

Even if your assumption were true and no one cared about the content but the participants, how would that be a bad thing?

Chad Whitacre created something really clever and novel with Gittip. In the light of your harsh words, can you claim as much? :)

> Time to put down the Scoble koolaid and do transparency where it counts.

Okay. Where does it count?

I can understand and respect that decision. :^)

I actually really love the way that Balanced is finding its own definition for what an open company is. It's so much more powerful than if we always agreed on everything. And I hope you know you can call me privately any time you think I've truly gone too far, and we'll find a solution together.

Thanks, I'd love to! :D

Is the refer.ly address still best?

http://www.daniellemorrill.com/about-me/contact-me/

:^)

Thanks! I didn't know that about NeXT. It's especially interesting compared to Apple, as you mention! Also, your comment about Peter Thiel led me to discover these great lecture notes from a class of his:

http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

I want to find a way to combine the transparency and emphasis on personal autonomy of open source projects with the unparalleled productivity of traditional, closed corporations. It's a delicate balance.

The thing is, these "open calls" are hidden in plain site. How many people are actually watching an hour and a half of me gabbing with somebody? I understand that journalism has traditionally been about "the scoop." In a world of information overload, just because something is technically open doesn't mean it's made its way into the public consciousness.

I can love burritos but still prefer they not be forced into my mouth by corporations or governments.

Keep private things private, the rest can be transparent. Anything you say to a reporter should fall into the second category. Answering a TC reporter's questions in an open recording has far more marketing value than just answering questions.