PR person lashes Editor
By Techgirl

The relationship between PR firms and journalists is essential but sometimes uneasy.  Both need each other, but if they get too cozy both lose credibility. Being based in Mumbai, I can tell you that at least 50 percent of all stories you see in Bollywood magazines have been planted by the star’s PR people.  And Bollwood journalists are happy to work with PR firms as their readers want to read all such gossip.

What I am uneasy about is how powerful some Indian journalists have become.  You can vote out the BJP, Congress and the Communists; Babus and Supreme Court judges have a retirement age and may be answerable to the Lokayukta, but journalists live in their own world.  The journalists I saw as a child are still around sermonizing on every topic under the sun.  I think there should be some sort of retirement age for journalists as well. Would I be pushing it if I asked Anna Hazare to include journalists in the Lokayukta Bill as well?

Techcrunch is the most powerful technology blog in the world.  It’s Founder and Editor Michael Arrington has the power to make or break startups with his coverage.  Every Indian tech journalist I know reads Techcrunch to get an idea of what is happening.  And like many strong willed journalists, Arrington has rubbed some people the wrong way.  But not many people have dared to publicly criticize him till recently.

Today, Vanessa Camones who is the founder and principal of communications agency theMIX, has written an article urging all entrepreneurs to say no to Editor Arrington.  Excerpts from the article

“
TechCrunch founder and Editor Michael Arrington has proven he’s willing to use TechCrunch as his personal vehicle for settling scores. It’s why I advise my clients to steer clear of him.

Take the most recent example of the many instances of bad behavior on Arrington’s part. Caterina Fake, a serial entrepreneur best known as a co-founder of Flickr, apparently learned that Mike was going to write a post about the funding she had not yet announced for her latest startup. She left Flickr and helped launch another company, Hunch, before diving into this new, stealthy startup. I don’t know Caterina, but she seems to have learned Mike’s game enough to beat him at it: She quickly posted about the funding herself on her own blog, beating TechCrunch to the scoop.

For any normal publication, that’s where the story would end. Not with TechCrunch. Arrington went to his blog and posted the following awfulness: “Last year when she left Hunch it was an extremely sordid situation. Because of some very chatty people close to the company I had all the details about her leaving, and why. And I never posted … I’m still not going to write about why Fake really left Hunch, because it’s not something that should be written.”

This wasn’t just Arrington getting even: it was a warning to any others in the Valley not to mess with TechCrunch. If you don’t give Mike dibs on writing about your company’s latest milestone, you too risk having your personal reputation publicly smeared on TechCrunch, and all of your peers, competitors and potential investors will see it.

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Read Vanessa’s full article to understand how parts of tech journalism work.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog techgirltalk.blogspot.com.  Techgirl has been ejected from Twitter for satirizing an Indian Minister.  Her satire blog has links to her Times of India interview detailing her being kicked out of Twitter, and then being invited back.