social news
How do TechCrunch stories make it to Digg's front page so often? With a little help from its friends, of course. Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley, now a
foe of editor Michael Arrington,
posted a screenshot from his inbox revealing what Riley calls "The TechCrunch Digg Club." It includes four writers from TechCrunch proper; seven from gadgets blog CrunchGear; two from TechCrunchIT, Arrington's incomprehensible enterprise-tech spinoff; plus two or three interns.
More »
silicon valley users guide
Self-styled serious bloggers are
tripping over each other to distance themselves from Gizmodo's childishly funny prank at CES, in which
Gawker Media class clown Richard Blakeley turned off entire banks of TV displays with a remote control. The critics advocate for more maturity and morality, in posts titled "douche" and "crap." The bloggers' real concern is that they'll lose their recently acquired just-like-old-media access to PR dog-and-pony shows and the snack room at CES. It used to be bloggers bragged about not needing those things, and not being corrupted by them. The guy at TechCrunch's gadget blog
weighs in: "Will Denton's kids grow up? Absolutely." Then he posts a photo of a douche box. When I grow up, I want to be just like him.
blogging for dollars
We hear that writers for
CrunchGear, the gadgets blog run by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, have had their pay cut by more than half, from
$25 a post to $12 $3,000 a month to $1,500. One wonders: Has Arrington simply found that he can get away with paying bloggers less? Or, in cutting his writers' wages, is he tacitly admitting that his efforts to expand his empire — from the niche of covering Web startups to the more popular subjects of cell phones and digital cameras — haven't been successful?
Update: We also hear a writer was fired from
MobileCrunch, told that the wireless-focused site was on the verge of getting shut down. And now we've heard from CrunchGear and MobileCrunch editor John Biggs. His comments, after the jump.
More »
Valleywag
"Some writers were put on hold and some were let go as part of standard site growth." — an anonymous CrunchGear staffer pathetically tries to spin the cutbacks at Michael Arrington's flailing gadget site as a symptom of success. [News.com]
