Valleywag
And they say that the tech media elite is white, male, overweight, and clubby. Well, try making that claim after Michael Arrington's latest announcement. The Techcrunch founder, who lost his female star writer after just a few weeks of misogynist abuse in the comments of the site, has a new diversity policy. His panel of experts, who choose which startups present at the Techcrunch 20 showcase this autumn, just got way more colorful.
The panel was exclusively male and, with the exception of Om Malik of Gigaom, white. No longer. Arrington has added another Indian, a half-Filipino woman, and a black man. In case we didn't notice, their pictures are splashed across the site. Rajeev Motwani and Caterina Fake are eminently qualified; but MC Hammer? That's just ludicrous tokenism. Of course, Arrington is doing nothing that an establishment media company wouldn't. Says one counterpart: "To be fair we had Morgan Freeman pontificating about his great video venture at our conference last fall."
Michael Arrington's token black man
And they say that the tech media elite is white, male, overweight, and clubby. Well, try making that claim after Michael Arrington's latest announcement. The Techcrunch founder, who lost his female star writer after just a few weeks of misogynist abuse in the comments of the site, has a new diversity policy. His panel of experts, who choose which startups present at the Techcrunch 20 showcase this autumn, just got way more colorful.
The panel was exclusively male and, with the exception of Om Malik of Gigaom, white. No longer. Arrington has added another Indian, a half-Filipino woman, and a black man. In case we didn't notice, their pictures are splashed across the site. Rajeev Motwani and Caterina Fake are eminently qualified; but MC Hammer? That's just ludicrous tokenism. Of course, Arrington is doing nothing that an establishment media company wouldn't. Says one counterpart: "To be fair we had Morgan Freeman pontificating about his great video venture at our conference last fall."
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9:14 AM on Fri May 11 2007
By Nick Denton
2,710 views
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