TechCrunch is often surrounded by drama and it now turns out that an intern has been blogging in return for free gifts.
Editor's note: An interview with the itern is now available online.
Every now and then drama seems to arise from the shadows of TechCrunch, and this week it happened again. Was anyone surprised to hear that a 17-year old intern at TechCrunch had demanded free gifts in return for coverage? We doubt it.
Given TechCrunch's way of doing "journalism" in general, we were honestly surprised to hear that the blog actually had interns though. Exactly what can an intern learn from the TechCrunch organization, aren't they all "interns" at the end of the day over there?
When TechCrunch grew into the sky, it was thanks to smart brains in the Web 2.0 industry. In some cases these brains no longer really want to be associated with TechCrunch. When the Web 2.0 heat increased, TechCrunch pretty much fell flat when it came to giving proper analysis of what was really going on.
It rapidly became clear that TechCrunch served primarily one purpose: To blog unfiltered about companies that gave them a story, and hope that the same companies would sign up for sponsorships later on. The strategy worked for a short time when venture capital flooded into the Web 2.0 industry. Today, there aren't a whole lot of sponsors that want to be associated with the TechCrunch brand, anyway. And editorial "scoops" are rarely relevant no more.
Despite all that, some companies are seemingly willing to give a TechCrunch intern gifts in return for coverage though, but we have our strong doubts that these companies would have ended up anywhere in the long run, no matter how many posts TechCrunch had covered them in.
 |
|
|
|
|
_pt00.jpg)
_pt00.jpg)
_pt00.jpg)
_pt00.jpg)
|
Archive