Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Hi Paul Graham,

I’m one of your customers.

We don’t really know each other. We’ve chatted at a few events, Hacker News features some of my posts, but I’m mostly just a guy who reads Hacker News a lot. I find it’s a pretty good place to see what’s important in the industry.

I am software guy, not a media critic. But I’m a big believer that economic incentives shape behaviors in subtle and unmeasurable ways. And I think your decision to make investments in startups is going to make Hacker News a worse product.

I can’t tell you exactly how. Are you going to be a little more likely to flag stories about competitors to your companies? Upvote them, even when they’re not newsworthy, to show you’re not biased?

I don’t know. But I think it’s going to happen, it’ll be subtle, and it’ll make Hacker News worse.

I’m not making demands or threatening to leave. Just making a request, from one software guy to another: moderator independence is a great feature. Please don’t cut it.

Best wishes,

Reg Braithwaite

I think that's not a fair analogy. PG isn't the curator for content on HN, and while you could argue he could algorithmically alter stories about YC companies, or manually remove stories, this isn't an editorial blog. It's a collection, and the users vote stories up and down.

PG's goal from HN is to get a pulse of the tech community, see smart people who may be interesting to invest with in the future.

Arrington theoretically runs a journalistic operation, and he brings up journalistic integrity when it suits him. This is a much stronger conflict of interest for something that perceives itself as journalistic.

While the blog didn't bring up great examples of how this will hurt TC, I don't think it's an even analogy.

It's fast and loose, but to be honest I neither agree nor disagree with the post's premise, it just seemed like a good point to bring up to spark some discussion.

As for journalistic integrity, my feeling is that conflict of interest in journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist and his readership. Media properties all have strong biases fueled by the self-interest of their owners, the market they are attempting to serve with their product, or other factors. In the era of Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs, journalistic integrity seems like a quaint notion, more unusual when it is present than when it is absent.

I live in Toronto. None of my daily newspapers are unbiased. How about your town?

I disagree with this assertion: "my feeling is that conflict of interest in journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist and his readership."

A lot of people view Arrington as the face of TechCrunch and I feel like his stories drive a significant amount of traffic to the portal. I, for one, know that I read stories with his name on it -- even if I'm not terribly interested in them.

But, if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant -- since someone else will break the story, or it may be biased. (And, let's be fair -- nobody expects complete impartiality from an investor. They're already partial, else they wouldn't be investing.)

To quote Arrington, "There’s a period of time with any investment when I know an investment is possible or likely but it can’t be announced yet. During that time I don’t write about the startup at all, because I can’t disclose the investment. When another writer wants to break a story we may have to hold that story, or it becomes a forcing function in announcing sooner." And this is the hart of the debate.

To address your other point: I know many, many, many journalists who have incredible integrity -- just avid news consumers today are becoming disenfranchised by news media (and I'd like to point out that Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs are none of the above) does not mean that it does not exist. Would you really rather go to the biased news source if the unbiased one was right next to it?

This is the type of decision that is an inflection point -- because Arrington's refusal to stop will allow a lot of tech journalists to begin lobbying hand grenades at any unfavorable TC press ("I sure hope that Arrington doesn't have a hand in that! hahaha.")

if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant

It's up to you whether you want to read his stuff or not, and why. However, I do not believe that bias in and of itself disqualifies a speaker/writer/source from relevancy:

http://raganwald.posterous.com/bias

By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it, and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.

I have my own reasons for not reading Techcrunch, but Arrington's investments isn't one of them.

>By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it, and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.

The difference between TechCrunch and Daring Fireball is that Gruber presents Daring Fireball as his personal blog. It's not presented as a news source. Gruber is more of a pundit than a journalist, and he wears his biases on his sleeves, showing them to everyone. He's using the soapbox that DF gives him to push his views.

TC, on the other hand, is presenting itself as a news site. The people on it, unless they are offering commentary, are supposed to be Journalists. Their reporting should strive to not be biased, which includes reporting any potential conflicts of interest(i.e. investing) in a company within the coverage of the company. A reader should think that the coverage on the site is noteworthy because it is news, and should not have to question the author's intentions or reasons for featuring it.

Otherwise, it's just advertisement at best. At worst, it's just self enrichment by the author. I should note that I'm fine with with this, if the site presents themselves as such. If you're going to be biased, announce it to the universe. Don't hide behind being a "journalist" as your reason for not disclosing anything.

As a matter of personal morality, I would say this. I don't believe that journalists need to >try to be< unbiased. However, if I were talking to someone who does believe that journalists need to >try to be< unbiased, I would be careful not to claim that my own writing is journalism. No matter what I believe the word means, knowingly misleading someone else is wrong.

I don't know if Arrington knowingly misleads people by claiming to be a journalist, but if he is deliberately setting an expectation of lack of bias and lack of personal interest in order to profit from that, well, we can both agree that regardless of what journalism means to me or to Arrington, it is wrong to set a false expectation.

I said that the journalists should try to be unbiased, not that they themselves should be. It's a very subtle difference, but I know that it's impossible for them not to be unbiased. They are human, after all.

The problem that I have with Arrington being allowed to invest in silicon valley startups, while maintaining his role as an editor of TC is that it presents a pretty clear conflict of interest.

That knowledge alone would make me, a reader, question the intent behind any story. It makes it hard to take any of their coverage seriously, because for all I know, Arrington could be using his readership to enrich himself over actually reporting interesting news.

There are things of varying subtlety in HN explicitly designed to favor YC companies. HN's YC bias is not hidden.

Yes, http://searchyc.com is something that is passed on by word of mouth

I don't follow.

That is not a YC project. From the bottom of the home page

SearchYC.com is not affiliated with Y Combinator in any way, shape, or form.

Hacker News is an amazing way to market YC. Notice how it is a subdomain? He could have easily changed it to hackernews.com or something but why? It serves as a great way to get the word out about YC.

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