Michael Arrington is writing for TechCrunch again.
A year ago, he was booted from AOL because then media boss Arianna Huffington didn't like how he was an investor in startups, writing about startups.
But now Huffington is no longer the boss of all AOL media. She's over in the Huffington Post corner (a very big corner).
The current boss of AOL's tech media brands doesn't care as much.
MG Siegler, Arrington's partner at a VC firm called Uncrunched, is also going to be writing more for TechCrunch again (though he never actually stopped).
Last year I was fired and began writing on Uncrunched.
Today AOL unfired me.
I am a venture capitalist and have all sorts of conflicts of interest. Many of you think that conflicts of interest are inherently bad and people with them shouldn’t be writing stuff for other people to read. A lot of people would agree with you. It was the reason AOL fired me last year, after they invested in my venture fund CrunchFund.
AOL now also disagrees.
Before everyone starts freaking the [redacted] out, just hold on a second and hear me out.
First of all, it’s not like I’m back running the place. AOL already put the kibosh on one post I was going to write, something that never happened in the old days. They had a good reason, they wanted to wait until things were properly announced. So I just wrote about it on Uncrunched instead.
Arrington's boss, Jay Kirsch (with a K) also explains:
Are they conflicted? Yeah, of course they are, and we will be transparent on that issue at all times. But, we also believe our readers are smart enough to put these columns into context and understand the impact of CrunchFund’s investing on the editorial.
As consumers of tech news, we're glad Arrington and Siegler are going to be writing more.
As producers of tech news, we need to stop writing this post and get back to work now.
Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
