Arrington Exits TechCrunch; Takes jab at Arianna Huffington
From the TechCrunch conference in San Francisco, this post is brought to you by Alexei Oreskovic and Sarah McBride:
Michael Arrington, one of the most high-profile figures in the world of tech blogging, has lost the TechCrunch soapbox he built. But he’s found a new way to get his point across: T-shirts
Arrington took the stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Monday, moments after parent-company AOL announced that he was no longer part of the company due to his new role heading up a $20 million venture capital fund.
“It’s no longer a good situation for me to stay at TechCrunch,” Arrington said, calling it a sad moment for him and promising to get the controversy out of the way at the start, to avoid distracting from the 3-day conference in San Francisco.
True to form, the pugnacious Arrington unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt with the words “unpaid blogger” printed in large letters, a jab at AOL/Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, who had insisted that Arrington was no longer an AOL employee after news of his VC fund surfaced.
“That’s what I’m down to: making statements on fucking T-Shirts. That and Twitter,” Arrington said later, during an on-stage interview with Linked-In co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Hoffman, an investor in the fund, said earlier comments he had made about the connections between the fund and TechCrunch’s closeness to start-ups were interpreted too broadly. “I don’t have any doubts about yours or TechCrunch’s integrity,” he said on stage.
Tech Summit Q&A, day 1: AOL’s Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington joined us Monday for the premiere of the 2011 Reuters Global Technology Summit.
Here’s a clip of Tim Armstrong answering why he thinks the expansion of AOL’s local news service Patch is a sound investment.
And another clip of Tim Armstrong, this time talking about one of two Tech CEOs he admires:
Who’s the other one? Jeff Boyd from Priceline.com.
“He doesn’t get brought up much but he’s one of the best leaders in the Internet space. Very quiet but outstanding results,” Armstrong said of Boyd.
David Eun Exits AOL after Huff Po purchase
Another high-level AOL executive is heading for the exit door after the company shifted its content strategy again with the $315 million acquisitionof the Huffington Post. David Eun (pictured left), the ex-Googler recruited by AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong to be president of AOL media and studios, is leaving. Eun is a causality of the Huff Po purchase that put the charismatic high profile founder Arianna Huffington in charge of AOL’s content.
In a memo to AOL employees posted on AOL’s technology blog TechCrunch, Eun described how he and Armstrong tried to find a place for Eun at AOL after the acquisition.
“I came to AOL last year to be the leader of the media organization. With the historic acquisition of The Huffington Post, my role and responsibilities as President, AOL Media are changing. Tim and I have discussed at length how I might continue within the new organizational structure, but ultimately there isn’t a role that matches what I am seeking to do.”
Eun was not immediately available to comment.
It’s the latest of a long list of switches and departures at AOL as the company attempts to turn itself into a media powerhouse dependent mainly on advertising revenue and tries to move away from its lucrative but dying dial-up business. At first, AOL’s Armstrong made a big deal about scooping up journalists to turn out original content around politics, sports, health and entertainment. That idea fell by the wayside as AOL decided to either outright buy that content — such as the purchase of the influential tech blog TechCrunch and Huff Post – or simply outsource it.
PaidContent’s Staci D. Kramer has the low down on the AOL executive shuffle and changes to the structure. Eun tells Kramer: “It’s not easy but I go back to why did I come. The job I came here for isn’t exactly the job that’s going to be available after.”
(Photo from AOL corporate site)
Huff Po? God, I get tired of useless anagrams when they aren’t necessary! It makes me less likely to read the articles when they start off by irritating me.
Lots of traffic, but show us the money
Traditional media companies have spent the better part of two years trying to cope with the double whammy of recessionary forces washing away advertising revenue and the changing habits of consumers. So how do a bunch of young buck Internet companies see themselves ? As media companies!
Well sort of. Not, you know, old school media companies. Rather, “technology enabled media companies,” as James Pitaro, vice president, media at Yahoo phrased it when pressed on Tuesday during a panel discussion about the future of media hosted by I Want Media.
Pitaro was on hand with a bunch of other big names like Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post; David Eun, AOL Media president; and Josh Cohen, senior business project manager at Google News. (Go here for the complete lineup).
AOL and Yahoo are trying to one-up each other in becoming the largest producers of content by taking a high/low approach, or to use the media wonk term “pro-am.” These companies are hiring “high quality” journalists (pros) mixing it with a group of anybodies who churn out copy on various topics for little to no money (the amateurs). See: Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Associated Content and AOL’s Patch and Seed.
There was a lot of talk about traffic on this panel and how these sites are dominating traditional media outlets on the Web. AOL, Yahoo, Google News and now Huffington Post are usually in the top 10, if not the top five most visited news and current events Web sites, according to Nielsen Online. Moderator Patrick Phillips, founder and editor of I Want Media, pointed out that Huff Post was only five years old and there is already talk it will surpass the New York Times in traffic – a point that Phillips found “astonishing.”
It is. Yet traffic is one of many metrics to judge success. A better one is revenue and profit. That was hardly touched on this panel — only the last 10, 15 minutes of the discussion was devoted to advertising revenue, which all these sites depend upon heavily. One exception on the panel is Google, which is hauling in tons of advertising revenue and is in no rush to become a content producer. A site can have all the traffic in the world but if it can’t monetize it, what good are all of those uniques?
On another note, Huffington denied that her site was for sale after TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld wrote that Yahoo is looking to acquire the Huffington Post. Pitaro said Yahoo doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation and that Yahoo has “a fantastic relationship with the Huffington Post.” Huffington goes into some detail with Andy Plesser of Beet.TV.
from DealZone:
Stress-Test Expertise
It seemed only a bit odd that media star Arianna Huffington was the guest host on CNBC the day the all-important stress test results were due. Not to play down her credentials in media or commentary circles, but where were the celebrated bank analysts, the corporate chieftains and the investment gurus who so routinely enjoy a dose of the limelight on America's Business Channel?
Wasn't this the perfect day for a newsmaker rather than a news talker? The Huffington Post founder has been a good reality check on market cheerleaders who live on CNBC, but on Stress-Test Thursday, the less-than-casual viewer expects insiders with insight. It tasted like something strange and exotic had made its way into the DealZone coffee machine.
Then disgraced former New York Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer joined the fray, and the slightly odd became surreal. Spitzer, who casually noted he was invited to the show (hint, hint), gave a spirited view from the nosebleed seats, far back from the federal policymakers' bench.
Forget all this stress test stuff -- what about Spitzer's attempt at resurrection? Anchor Joe Kernen asked whether Spitzer the AG would have prosecuted Spitzer the governor and Spitzer the guest legal expert answered no, arguing that issues of judgment are more important than issues of law.
This should be equally true for the banks, Spitzer said. But the banks' transgressions were far more damaging to many more people than Spitzer's own. It's hard to believe moral suasion and limiting access to cheap funds would have been enough to persuade greedy bankers to act more responsibly. Certainly, shareholders would not have rewarded them for behaving better while others were making a killing selling toxic investments.
DealZone commends CNBC's producers and guest bookers for creative thinking. While the stress test results are not due until late this afternoon, so much has been leaked already that the minutiae still to come will probably numb the minds of even the hardiest financial news junkies. With no news to break, the Huffington/Spitzer show turned out to be refreshingly watchable. Indeed, who understands a stress test better than Eliot Spitzer?
Deals of the Day:
Huffingtonpost to fund investigative journalism
Just got back from a panel discussion at Michael’s restaurant in Manhattan where Huffingtonpost founder Arianna Huffington said that the news and commentary website is going to raise money to fund investigative journalism projects.
I asked her for more details afterward. She said there wouldn’t be any for another three months or so. That leaves me with precious little more to deliver than context. Her plan comes as the news business itself faces dire code-orange-style threat levels — many U.S. newspaper publishers are mired in debt and their ad sales are thinning, making it hard to see how they will soldier on. Not only that, investors are fleeing from them like the proverbial rats from a sinking ship and their equity value is hitting the low single digits.
For all media companies, whether or not they’re in the hands of investors, the ad revenue decline is hitting them hard, and all sorts of publications are axing staff. It leaves many media talking heads and bloggers wondering whether news will survive into the 21st century, at least in the way we know it.
Huffington’s website is small compared with big professional publishers, but it looks like she’s latching on to a growing trend. Mark Cuban, who was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with insider trading on Monday, is financing several investigative journalism ventures, including former CBS newsman Dan Rather’s reports. Two other projects that he has funded, sharesleuth.com and bailoutsleuth.com, seek to expose financial wrongdoings as well as poorly thought out ways to spend Wall Street bailout money amid the financial crisis. Both are trying to tackle big projects that it is becoming increasingly hard to pay for at many traditional media outlets.
There also is ProPublica.org, of course, the privately funded investigative journalism operation that’s helmed by former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger.
As for Huffington, there is nothing else to report, but for now — Investigate this space.
(Photo: Reuters)
Clinton in 2012? Why not, Huffington says.
Nationally syndicated columnist and Huffingtonpost.com co-founder/editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington may not have been a personal supporter of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nomination (HuffPost didn’t endorse a candidate), but she has kind words for the New York senator and former first lady all the same.
I met Arianna in New York on Tuesday to ask her what she, as the author of a book about women conquering their fears, thought about Clinton’s failure to secure the nomination and her political future.
Here’s what she said about…
Supporting Obama:
Since this is an election where we are clear that it’s in the best interests of the country that (Arizona Republican Senator) John McCain is not president , and we have seen that Obama has a much better chance of defeating John McCain, it’s a very clear choice. (With Obama) there’s no equivocation. It’s the future, getting out of Iraq. It’s a dramatically different take on the economy. It’s a clear break with the past, which the country’s really longing for.
Drawbacks to Clinton:
The two main drawbacks were that she did vote to authorize the war, so it’s much harder to oppose the war as categorically as Obama can oppose it, given that he has been against it from 2002… Given now that a vast majority of the American people know the war was wrong, if you knew that from the begining, you’d have a real clear advantage.
Where in the Hell did this caustic obnoxious person, Arriana Huffington come from? I think it started by her getting a bunch of money from a divorce. How come she spews her distorted views with such impunity? She’s harder to listen to than Fran Dresher, and has less relevant things to say! Why isn’t there an equally powerful opposing blog site on the internet? We sure need one.
If you haven’t seen his departure speech at techcrunch disrupt, here is a summary: http://srml.in/i9WpS/.