Wall Street Journal
Michael Arrington may have left TechCrunch behind for his new venture capital firm CrunchFund, but he has not left blogging. He plans to write about startups and journalism on a personal blog but says he will not be hiring other staffers for the site.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Arrington said he was “very very close” to staying at AOL two days before he officially left:
On Saturday, “We got to a point where we agreed on the statement that I would stay with AOL and continue to write,” he said. He and AOL executives began discussing a blog post he would write announcing the plan but “there was a concern that we would ‘reignite the flames’ with anything I wrote. We just couldn’t come to an agreement.”
Arrington said the episode made him worry that he wouldn’t “be able to write whatever I felt was true,” which he felt meant that TechCrunch wouldn’t have “real editorial independence.”
