A moratorium on TechCrunch

Editor-in-Chief Milo Yiannopoulos explains why he is removing TechCrunch from his RSS reader and vowing not to visit the site until it’s under new management.

This week, Robin Wauters, a well respected European tech reporter, left TechCrunch after many years of loyal service. Hapless TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld failed to give him the send-off he deserved, preferring to concentrate on the acquisition of two likeable but unremarkable new reporters. But Robin is a diplomatic sort, more likely to throw himself into his new duties than linger on the discourtesy shown to him.

And besides, Robin has read the writing on the wall. He’s off to The Next Web, which is good news for both parties. I’ve often criticised TNW for being hopelessly boring – and it is – but with Robin’s arrival, there’s finally the chance of some credibility and personality on the site. So this is good for Europe. (Finally, I will know the name of someone who writes for The Next Web!)

More troubling, however, are the implications of these new hires for TechCrunch’s European Editor, Mike Butcher. I was astonished and saddened to see Ingrid Lunden, whose writing I’ve been following for a while at paidContent, commit professional seppuku by joining the TechCrunch team. One saving grace for her is that she is clearly reporting to the US operation – but on Europe.

That means Mike’s days at TechCrunch are numbered. My sources at AOL tell me that Erick views Mike, who has been the lynchpin of the European scene for years, as “spread too thinly”. He thinks that TechCrunch Europe is “no longer performing its function”. So Erick, albeit in typically clumsy fashion, has tried to replace him with a staffer under more direct control from San Francisco than the maverick Butcher.

That is not such good news for Europe. We asked a long time ago why Mike was still at TechCrunch, when he could so obviously be running his own blog and enjoying the revenue from his events and, presumably, from TechHub.

After all, the word on the street in London is that Mike’s turned a tidy profit out of the Government’s current enthusiasm for east London. Bigging up Silicon Roundabout on behalf of Eric van der Kleij must have done wonders for the TechHub membership roster.

But Mike doesn’t seem to have the chutzpah to go it alone, and refuses to be drawn on the subject at all. I’m not entirely sure why. What’s clear is that when he does leave, he can expect the same sort of brazen and disgusting treatment from Schonfeld.

All of which would be dull, insidery nonsense were it not for a glaring truth about TechCrunch: the site is in freefall.

Like any publication, TechCrunch thrived when it did two things well: made you laugh, and made you think. It no longer does either. You can only get away with reporting free from personality or ego if you’re a really spectacular journalist.

But there is, quite literally, no one left at TechCrunch I admire enough to make me put up with its bizarre self-obsession and the awful spectacle of its implosion. And no one lasts long in emerging tech journalism without a bit of personality.

Given these developments, I’m going to try a little experiment. I am a technology writer, and I edit a technology comment and analysis magazine. But could I survive without ever reading TechCrunch, or attending their events? I believe that I could – nothing is reported there which is not later repeated elsewhere – and that, moreover, I should.

Erick Schonfeld’s treatment of his greatest assets, many of them, admittedly, acquaintances and friends of mine, has been bad enough. But even worse has been his incompetent stewardship and the transformation of TechCrunch from a scrappy, wild and controversial blogging network into a dull as ditchwater, self-absorbed snoozefest. And if there’s one truly cardinal sin, as far as The Kernel is concerned, it’s being boring.

“Another day, another round of ‘TechCrunch is dead’ in my Twitter stream,” wrote newly promoted Alexia Tsotsis yesterday. Well, yes, Alexia. That is what happens when something is dying.

Until TechCrunch is under new management, I’m out.