Leo Laporte loses it with Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang | Hacker News Reader

Leo Laporte loses it with Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang

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109 pointszeedotme66 comments

The interruption was a bit rude. Arrington is a lawyer, and that's just what legal folks do. Laporte felt it was a bit disrespectful, and though the level of reaction was not warranted, a reaction was understandable. Laporte has been around forever, and I think he's earned a pretty good reputation amongst nerds. Also, have you seen crunchgear? These people do not know their tech -- that much is clear. They are in the business of selling tech, not creating it. That being said, they're important.

I'm a recovering lawyer myself and I left because working with lawyers was worse than anything I had experienced before (which was working mainly with startups and non-profits in NY).

Its fascinating to me. There are a lot of bitter nerds out there who passionately hate T/C, like fanatically so. It seems the slashdot/reddit crowd has repeatedly criticized those guys for being marketers rather than geeks, and they are right in that basic premise but I think the level of animosity is unwarranted. Even if these guys aren't pedigreed nerds, they are fascinated by and love technology and they are an important part of the industry.

Its one of the reasons I like HN -- it has a much more nuanced view of the important role folks like Arrington and the VC community play in the bigger world outside of nerdland.

I think there are at least a few nerds who also hate TechCrunch because of some pretty shoddy journalism like the whole Last.fm imbroglio.

Yeah, agreed. Though he tries his best to hide the fact, Arrington was a lawyer at a big law firm, neither a nerd nor a journalist. And here he is running a "news" site about technology.

To his credit, he filled a void. I wish there were folks like Arrington around and things like the VC-funded "internet week" in NY this week back in 1999 during the first dot-com boom. Something is better than nothing. And he's on the right side of a lot of things -- specifically on intellectual property regulation.

And also to his credit, he's trying and he listens. He's been responding to commenters on his site and there's something to be said about that.

though the level of reaction was not warranted, a reaction was understandable.

How could he continue with the review? It was obviously going to be a positive one, and just by raising the question of bias, Arrington pissed in the pool. Anything Leo could have said would've been filtered through that lens.

No, no I agree. He not only interrupts him, he does so to question someone like Laporte's journalistic integrity. Coming from someone like Arrington immediately following the last.fm thing, this is clearly something to object strongly to.

But Laporte does get pretty salty there. And at one point he tells all of them to fuck off, not just Arrington.

Arrington is a complete hole and Leo does actually care about technology. I was kind of puzzled why Leo started with the Gilmore Gang anyway. The show is 98% attitudes and is generally idea-free. It was good to see Leo blow up over Arrington's trolling.

He just couldn't let Dvorak have all the (inane, gasbag, technically incorrect) fun?

Leo Laporte comments on TC article:

"Thanks for the post, Mike. Apology accepted. Now that I know what was going on in your mind, I apologize to you.

There seems to be something about the Gillmor Gang that just engenders over the top passion. I’m embarrassed by my overreaction. Peace."

Leo was justified to call Arrington out. What a douchebag thing to imply honestly.

While you fan the flames, the principals are apologizing to one another.

Of course they're apologizing, it would be crazy to let a vendetta form over something like this. But that doesn't mean Leo wasn't justified here.

If he'd let Arrington, speak, Arrington would have mentioned that Palm seems to have only been giving review units to reviewers who have previously given the Palm Pre favorable coverage.

They're talking to each other directly now. Both said they were basically mortified about the incident. I have more respect for Arrington after this than before it.

A pox on both their houses.

I'm honestly not surprised since Leo is a nice guy. However, it speaks to Arrington's character that he would accuse Leo of bias before allowing him to explain why he liked the pre. I agree with Leo's original assessment that Arrington is a Troll.

As part of this community, I am embarrassed that your comment has 23 points.

as part of this community I am embarrassed that your comment has -2 points.

sigh TechCrunch is a whole bunch of trolls, but there aren't enough startup news sites. I read TechCrunch in my pile of feeds, but with a large grain of salt. Is there a site which covers basically the same news, without the silly Twitter love fest, and with less asshole-ish editors?

I'd really love to see real journalists who believe in "be good" doing a solid site. If that were to happen, people could send their exclusives and firsts there to slowly put TechCrunch out of business.

Agree wholeheartedly. Techcrunch has its faults, but its the only site doing what it does. To nerds who are used to civilized, crowd-moderated discussions on slashdot/reddit/HN, sites like TC and mashable look like big troll kingdoms, but we have to take what we get.

The other thing worth noting is that outside of geek world, just about everything seems like troll kingdom. I want to puke when I see sites with millions of visitors but without threaded discussions, but its a sad reality and a slow process. The nerds are always ahead of the curve. The sad/funny thing is that slashdot didn't have these issues in the late 90's.

In terms of a site that covers the same news without the dickishness, aren't we on it right now? This is the best startup-news site I've ever found. And when t/c posts something worth reading, its usually here within minutes.

Oh if only such a site existed... I would love to drop TechCrunch completely.

I see a YC pitch in here somewhere...

Or an open source alternative?

VentureBeat (http://venturebeat.com), Silicon Alley Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/alleyinsider), and GigaOM (http://gigaom.com) are each high quality alternatives to TechCrunch.

It seemed like a slight overreaction here, but I have a feeling this was built-up rage over something else.

Agreed, Arrington's initial comment seemed to be a joke playing on all the accusations of him not disclosing his interests in start ups that are reviewed on TechCrunch.

I guess Leo is genuinely interested in technology. Arrington? I don't know off course but he doesn't seem to care.

Probably. It's such trash journalism this Arrington guy deals in. He should probably be covering celebrity gossip, not technology. Anyone can go try out a Pre, many people have review units, and he didn't even let him answer the question before suggesting bias.

Here's what I don't understand:

I see anti-Arrington comments like this frequently, yet TechCrunch appears on the frontpage every day (usually several times a day). Where's the disconnect?

(Full disclosure: I received a Mike Arrington review copy)

TC is polarizing, but HN doesn't have downvotes.

But isn't not upvoting a form of downvoting?

No, if 100 people love something and 100 people hate it, it will show up on the front page with +100. With downvoting, it would not show up on the front page with a score of 0.

It should be also mentioned that on most days it only takes a handful of votes to get to the front page.

It might take a lot more with downvoting!

It would certainly take more to get to the front page with downvoting. I think the trouble with downvoting is if you have a polarizing story that is interesting the vocal minority could in practice downvote stories that don't align with their worldview. Thus censoring an otherwise merit based story economy.

I was toying with different downvoting schemes but all of them seemed flawed in a fundamental way:

You could have downvotes after a certain threshold.

You could have downvoting carry a different weight based on how much karma you have.

You could have downvotes only after a certain time has passed thus making stories with polarizing opinions not get squashed immediately but still allow for the opposition to have their voice heard.

You could have downvotes only enabled on submissions from members under a certain karma threshold.

I am sure there are many more ways to do the downvoting but I think there is a more fundamental problem with downvotes in that it creates a kind of hostile community. It might be worth having the occasional dumb story come to the front page to keep this place a civil place. Downvotes in the comment section should be reserved for a person that does not further the discussion or is overly rude to another member here.

What about N downvotes per day, possibly based on the log of your karma? This reserves them for something that really bothers me, but limits the power of a like-minded community. It might also help to display the downvotes in red next to the total, since a downvote would be more scarce than an upvote, and may be more informative.

Not a bad idea... I like the attenuating nature of the log of the karma. It would probably need to be coupled with some of the other ideas in the parent post to be fair to new stories with only one karma unfairly down voted by one or two dissenting voices.

In that hypothetical situation it might be interesting to see both upvote and downvote numbers to gauge a 'controversy' vs. complete lack of interest (on both submissions and comments). Or perhaps listing 'score' and 'votes'.

Yes, but I actually sort of prefer the way this incentivizes sharing of interesting links with the community. That is, the only way to get the stuff you don't like off of the front page is to share something better!

Moreover, it indicates that getting the stuff you don't like off the front page is not something to strive for. If you don't like it, ignore it. It is a sign that at the moment, the community here has found nothing more interesting to show you.

I can't say I've seen a link I disliked so much that I felt the need to hunt down something to help drive it off the front page. This incentive seems dubious, and if real, the benefits dubious.

  downvoteArticle(id) {
      for (aid in articles) {
          if (aid!=id) upvote(aid);
      }
  }

More specifically, something like this, will add kinda functional downmod arrows:

  // Find all <a> links with an id of up_* then add a downmod arrow which upvotes everything apart from this article on the page.
	
  var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");     // Look at all links...
	
  for (var i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
    var alink = links.item(i);
    if (alink.id.substring(0,3)=="up_") {
	        // We found one...
            
    var downer = document.createElement("a");
    var img = document.createElement("img");
    img.src = "/graydown.gif";
    img.style.border = "0";
    downer.appendChild(img);
    alink.parentNode.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
    alink.parentNode.appendChild(downer);
    downer.href = "#";
    downer.onclick = function(n) {
        return function() {
            downmod(n);
        }
    }(alink);
  }

  // Downmod by upvoting everything else...
  function downmod(node) {
    var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");     // Look at all links...
	
    for (var i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
      var alink = links.item(i);
      if (alink.id.substring(0,3)=="up_") {
        // We found one...
        if (alink!=node) vote(alink);               // Vote for it...
      }
    }
  }

TechCrunch, Coding Horror -- both make me pine for downvotes. Nothing else does.

> Where's the disconnect?

Nobody can downvote articles.

Also, TC's journalism isn't usually just MA stirring up drama. The average TC article on HN simply profiles a new startup, or service, or acquisition.

just wondering - if nobody can downvote, how is it than some trollish stories end up at 0 or negative numbers?

Never seen a negative story, but I have seen stories removed, which is done by an admin (i think) after it gets a few 'flags'

you're right, i've never seen a story but i've seen comments that are at 0 or negative. I assume that there are a bunch of moderators that can downvote?

Anyone with 101 or more karma can downvote comments.

Now, the average TC article is about Twitter.

If Leo pressed on, wouldn't that have been a case of feeding the troll? Arrington even eggs him on with "Whatcha gonna do about it?" What a prick.

Ha ha, I just noticed the Wikipedia page for Arrington:

  J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Orange, 
  California)[1] is a troll, entrepreneur and was the
  maintainer[2] of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon
  Valley technology start-up communities and the wider
  technology field in USA and elsewhere.

Wonder how long that'll stay up..

A youtube comment says "Arrington is feared, Laporte is loved."

Feared? really?

YouTube commenters are known for their erudition.

The only thing this video did for me was remind me of TechTV. Never seen this side of him but I really do miss TechTV.

You should catch up and starting watching the Gillmor Gang. Leo has some respectable and well-informed opinions. He actually cares about technology, not plugging himself.

If we're going to keep this on the frontpage, then Valleywag gets to come back. Same kind of thing.

Thank god! I've been watching Leo Laporte on Twit Live for over a year, but I recently stopped watching as much because every time I tuned in, I had to watch the Gillmore Gang, and that guy always was such a douchebag and I could not stand to here him belittle everyone and speak as if he was some god and everyone else was just little peons. He was annoying, and made me even stop watching Leo Laporte. Good riddance.

I usually listen to TWIT as a podcast, but this makes me want to tune into the live feed to see if there is a follow up.

I subscribe to TWIT and Macbreak Weekly. I enjoyed the panel members (which are differently for the two shows, both the regular ones and the occasional). But what I enjoy the most is Laporte himself. I like his style and the effort that he puts in day in and day out to understand the technology. But mostly he is a very generous person, never cut off his guests and always let them be the experts. This is the first time that I have seen him standing up for himself and I like it. Good going, Leo.

This isn't important.

Crazy weird to me that you think that. Some of the most respected institutions in journalism are cratering --- when the NYT screws up, people make movies about it --- and what we're left with are the agile, light-weight, utterly unmoored web news outlets.

If we ran politics here, I'd be giving you the same rant about HuffPo and RCP.

But we run tech and entrepreneurship here, and if things break the wrong way for us (and him, I guess), Michael Arrington could be the next Robert Moses.

There goes the realest mofo on this forum.

People don't see this is what we're trading real journalism for. Diva bloggers that have to be kissed up to.

I find most news coverage to be lacking incisive commentary, regardless of the source#. Personalities in that news coverage aren't relevant, and paying attention to personal dramas (especially in cases like this - a simple misunderstanding largely caused by the medium) is even less important.

I think the way to make today's tech bloggers better is to pay attention to the stories and reporting that matters. Besides voting with our clicks, there is little else we can do to influence the market.

# edit: I think this means news is largely fungible. That's why there are so many social filters like twitter and tumblr and HN. Your peers voting on content is a better way to filter than tracking a reputable source.

755 comments and counting on Leo's ff:

http://friendfeed.com/twit-conversations/1d37431c/live-now-g...

and it looks like Arrington's apology has been accepted:

"Thanks for the post, Mike. Apology accepted. Now that I know what was going on in your mind, I apologize to you. There seems to be something about the Gillmor Gang that just engenders over the top passion. I’m embarrassed by my overreaction. Peace."

hrm, seems to me it could be a well played PR stunt. A Biggie vs. 2Pac or Microsoft vs. Google type competition. Probably not but there is probability that it is. If not they could use that for what it is worth.

Because the launch of a new phone, Techcrunch (Arrington) and Leo Laporte (nice guy but still marketing) don't have anything in common with a PR campaign or marketing campaign at all. Maybe Leo isn't guilty but Arrington does try to get controversy going. Nothing wrong with that in the PR business that he is in, TC does it well.

Judging by the reaction to this event and the response to my saying there is a probability of a PR stunt, I would say stuff like this is easier to pull off than you think.

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