Natali Del Conte was the editor that replaced Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch, and I think she did a nice job. But now she’s leaving, apparently to pursue a better offer according to Mike Arrington’s post over at CrunchNotes. This other company is not known yet, as far as I can see, but they must have paid quite some money as TechCrunch is a fairly solid spot to blog for, right?
However, there’s a sad, sad aspect to all of this as well, namely the impact from the TechCrunch commenters:
She also told me the comments were really getting to her, and the turmoil from last week (TechCrunch UK, NYTimes debacle) played a part as well.
It’s hard to explain how brutal user comments can be. And if you are a woman you often have to deal with sexism as well. Natali was dealing with both. She’s never had that kind of direct, anonymous feedback, and it’s clear it got to her to some extent. I’m very sorry for that.
People are bastards sometimes, and it truly saddens me that what I assume is a minor part of the TechCrunch readers can push someone into leaving for another gig.
And now Mike Arrington needs to hunt for a new editor for TechCrunch yet again. Finding someone who’ll do it will probably not be the issue here though, but filling the shoes of Marshall Kirkpatrick and Natali Del Conte is a bit harder. If he where to ask me (which he won’t of course) I would think twice.
Originally posted on December 19, 2006 @ 7:00 am