This is not an official response from The Blog Herald, this is a personal response, based on limited personal experiences of Mike Arrington.
While at a brief appearance at WordCamp I walked up to Mike Arrington, he brushed me off, ignored me and acted like a jerk. I left it at that. I followed up with an email a few weeks later about some startup news. Again brushed off. I’ve heard of plenty of others who have done the same.
However, Mike Arrington has taken time for people — people I know — that line his checkbook with dollars.
The problem with disclosure is that its simply not the issue. The issue I have with Mike Arrington is the system of stepping on the little guy. Which is why I have taken so much offense to Mike’s belittling of PayPerPost’s attempt to estable an entire new industry. Even if some look saddly upon it. Because Adsense Revenues are minimal. Yahoo isn’t an option. And MSN has never cared much about professional bloggers. Chitika is highly niche focussed and not very reliable. But PayPerPost seems to me to be an up and coming force.
Even the markets seem to be shifting with Text Link Ads. I hate to say it but my calculations show that link buying/selling is on a downward trend.
While this doesn’t have much to do with the issue on appearances it really is the entire issue to me looking from afar. People want some level of success. Maybe not TechCrunch success but they wholeheartedly want to have this business ProBlogging legitimized. And well instead of being apart of the solution Mike Arrington bashes companies that try to legitimize the business.
That’s the problem I have with him, and I think that’s the problem many have with him.
In his most recent post he clearly avoids the fact that TechCrunch is a blog, but its not a full on media publication. Again spotting off arrogantly that he is somehow supreme to the average blog publication. In my eyes again adding fuel to the fire.
I’m not Mike Arrington, and I never wish to be Mike Arrington. But he could learn alot by trying to make friends of bloggers instead of trying to defend himself all the time.
Originally posted on November 1, 2006 @ 7:20 pm