<story><title>Persuade xor Discover</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/discover.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsally</author><text>I&apos;ve never met Arrington, so whether he&apos;s nice or not doesn&apos;t really apply to me.  I also don&apos;t own a startup, so there&apos;s no conflict there.  My personal beef is that TechCrunch is a &apos;serious journalistic entity&apos; when they get documents leaked to them, but the second people start trying to hold them to the standard of real journalism suddenly it a blog.  It&apos;s difficult to pinpoint, but there&apos;s something two-faced about TechCrunch that I don&apos;t like.  It&apos;s some combination of the sensationalism, exaggeration, and in some cases outright fabrication that really get to me.  Since Arrington is the founder and figurehead of TechCrunch, my feelings about the blog naturally extend to him.&lt;p&gt;The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine.  I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful.  That doesn&apos;t mean I have to like their methods.  Google was successful through technical merit.  They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better.  I&apos;d like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation.  TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there&apos;s too much garbage there for me.&lt;p&gt;An example for your consideration:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-b...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For those too lazy to read, it&apos;s an article about making viral videos.  Some choice advice: &lt;i&gt;&quot;Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex&quot;&lt;/i&gt;.  It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube.  Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication.  That&apos;s why I don&apos;t like Arrington.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the reason why people don&apos;t hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value?  Hell, having the PDF of &lt;i&gt;On Lisp&lt;/i&gt; online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch&apos;s entire publication history.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Hate is a strong word.  If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that&apos;s pretty stupid.  Dislike is what I was getting at.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pg</author><text>&quot;I&apos;ve never met Arrington, so whether he&apos;s nice or not doesn&apos;t really apply to me.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Sure it does, if you&apos;ve read his articles.  Obviously most of the people who complain about him in comment threads have not met him in person.  The reason they dislike him is that he uses the same un-ingratiating style in his articles.&lt;p&gt;When he reports something he&apos;s heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it&apos;s just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it&apos;s not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage.  This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it.&lt;p&gt;Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you&apos;re willing to accuse TechCrunch of &quot;outright fabrication&quot; and &quot;baseless speculation&quot; and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student.&lt;p&gt;If you have any examples of &quot;outright fabrication,&quot; let&apos;s see them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Persuade xor Discover</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/discover.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsally</author><text>I&apos;ve never met Arrington, so whether he&apos;s nice or not doesn&apos;t really apply to me.  I also don&apos;t own a startup, so there&apos;s no conflict there.  My personal beef is that TechCrunch is a &apos;serious journalistic entity&apos; when they get documents leaked to them, but the second people start trying to hold them to the standard of real journalism suddenly it a blog.  It&apos;s difficult to pinpoint, but there&apos;s something two-faced about TechCrunch that I don&apos;t like.  It&apos;s some combination of the sensationalism, exaggeration, and in some cases outright fabrication that really get to me.  Since Arrington is the founder and figurehead of TechCrunch, my feelings about the blog naturally extend to him.&lt;p&gt;The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine.  I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful.  That doesn&apos;t mean I have to like their methods.  Google was successful through technical merit.  They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better.  I&apos;d like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation.  TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there&apos;s too much garbage there for me.&lt;p&gt;An example for your consideration:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-b...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For those too lazy to read, it&apos;s an article about making viral videos.  Some choice advice: &lt;i&gt;&quot;Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex&quot;&lt;/i&gt;.  It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube.  Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication.  That&apos;s why I don&apos;t like Arrington.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the reason why people don&apos;t hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value?  Hell, having the PDF of &lt;i&gt;On Lisp&lt;/i&gt; online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch&apos;s entire publication history.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Hate is a strong word.  If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that&apos;s pretty stupid.  Dislike is what I was getting at.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mattmaroon</author><text>I agree with you on the general principle about TechCrunch having far too low standards, but that article you linked was incredibly useful. It gave significant insight on how to game a system that can be very lucrative, from someone who has done it. It highlights the flaws in YouTubes counts and display methods that can be taken advantage of.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s actually the sort of thing I want to see on a blog or in a tech-focused newspaper. I could totally see that being a Wired Article (though copy-edited to be less like a how-to and more like a story).</text></comment>