TechCrunch UK, just a few months old, has been tremendously successful in creating a community for local UK & Ireland Entrepreneurs. However, today I put the blog on hold and terminated our relationship with editor Sam Sethi.
This all stems from Sam’s commentary on the recent Le Web conference in Paris. This has nothing to do with censorship. TechCrunch is listed as a sponsor/partner to the conference, but we have no financial arrangement with them. Loic even cancelled my own trip to Paris to keynote the conference at the last minute (largely because I waited until the last minute to book a flight and the cost to get me there became ridiculous). This was a Six Apart event, not a TechCrunch event.
Sam wrote his initial views of the conference in this post. It’s not what I would have written, but I have no editorial problem with that initial post. It was entirely Sam’s call as the editor of the blog.
Conference organizer Loic Le Meur, however, took offense at the post and left a regrettable comment, calling Sam an “asshole”. I haven’t spoken to Loic directly about why he left the comment, but it is likely he felt betrayed by a partner, and lashed out after being hit all day yesterday with criticism about the conference.
I emailed Loic and told him that while I have no issue with the original post that Sam wrote, I’d understand if he wanted us to delete his comment. He said he would like it removed, and he also apologized publicly on the blog post. I asked (didn’t order) Sam to remove the comment.
If Sam had decided in his editorial discretion not to remove Loic’s comment, that would have been fine. But he didn’t do that. He left the comment in, and then wrote a new post (which I have removed) highlighting the “asshole” comment to embarrass Loic, unneccesarily in my opinion. The fact that Sam did this, ignoring my request not to, and ignoring Loic’s apology, was unacceptable. He saw an opportunity for attention and took it, even at the cost of hurting someone else. I see this all the time – get a well known blogger to lose their cool and then leverage that event for further attention. Sure, Loic lost his cool. But he promptly apologized. He did not deserve to be trashed in a new post.
Even though I think at that point Sam had reached the limits of acceptable editorial discretion, it still would not have necessarily resulted in him having to leave TechCrunch. The actions that finally resulted in his dismissal were additional comments he wrote on that second post, announcing “that TechCrunch UK will be doing a series of seminars and a conference next year as well as a series of smaller meetings in conjunction with friends & partners which have been in the planning for sometime now.”
These events were not discussed with me, and certainly were not specifically approved. The fact that he promoted them while trashing a competing event was a clear conflict of interest and was not appropriate. I do not consider this to be ethical behavior.
None of this had to be aired publicly, but Sam chose to write a final post on the blog after he was terminated stating incorrectly that he was being terminated because of the original post. He has also written elsewhere publicly that he was terminated because he would not comply with my demand to delete a post. That is not accurate either. This is driven entirely from Sam’s ethical lapse in trashing a competitor while simultaneously promoting his own events. That’s not acceptable – readers will not be able to determine if he actually believed what he wrote about the conference, or rather exaggerated his opinions to futher his own business interests.
Basic ethical behavior is not subjective. We will not associate with individuals who choose to cross the line.
The blog is on hold until we determine if/when we will hire another editor and continue writing.
Update: I’ll also say this. Sam and I exchanged words this morning and I said he basically fired himself with that second to last post promoting his events. But nothing had been publicized and we certainly could have discussed a work around, public apology, retraction, etc. But the next thing I knew he’d posted on the blog about his dismissal. Until that happened, everything was reversible. After he took that step, the situation was no longer able to be resolved.
Oh Emily Rose, why did you continue to comment. This last one by you is my favorite:
“The fact that you cannot recognise this clearly makes you racist.”
Your last name is not by any chance Rose?
Hi Mike,
What happened was shameful. Couple of points.
1. I acknowlegde it was your gig therefore you call the shots. I do not see a problem with this, even though I support Sam 100%.
2. Sam reported getting involved with many events. If you read the blog, you would have seen these. So, it was a timing issue and perhaps not intended to compete with Les Web 3.0 (I was not there – but all reviews said it was disappointing! – and it was right for Sam to report the truth and his own views)
3. The event I organised with Sam and Ivan was not sponsored by Sam or TCUK. I assume same applies to most of the other events Sam gets involved in.
4. Where it says TCUK sponsored may means simply “attended and blogged by TCUK” and not contributed financially by TCUK. Bit of a misleader here…
5. TCUK was big and was going to be bigger. I like the style. Only disappointment was that it did not cover my company (www.ebdex.co.uk) nor addressed the enterprise 2.0. But Sam can be forgiven for this.
I and others had ideas. All it takes is few of us to get together and creater a better environment for entrepreneurs (I am just trying to be one).
Good luck with whatever you do in UK. More sites will be better for all of us.
WOW, Manoj Ranaweera, still no self respect, shamelessy, posting away any bit of avertisement you can, can you feel the negative vibes of anything you touch turn to GOLD, gold diggen effect touch I mean
Sorry for heckling so much, you guys awesome, see you at the next fiascal, I truly done posting, peace.
Mike, I sincerly feel that Emily’s first comment is pointing at something crucial: things are different in Europe, not necessarily better. You would learn something priceless if you manage to admit that, in some places, pratice gives more power to employees.
I have no authority to comment on your decision, and I won’t — but you have to understand proximity, and cultural differences make it more difficult for UK people to agree with you.
I would love some comments here to benefit from the same benevolent errasing as the one you were considering for Loïc: anger is not always good.
To Bertil:
In my opinion, Emily’s comments includes a deep hidden animosity towards north americans because of her events comment like Iraq. Her generalized responsive comments also indicate she has a bad choice of words when commenting. Her credibility is on shaky ground like the author of this blog in my opinion.
The point being, if your boss says remove it, and you feel otherwise, it is not a cultural issue, the same happens around the world for all journalists.
Plus, Mike said it was more than just that, it was the self promotion of events that were not approved. That is not a cultural thing either, unless the People of UK have some tradion with self promoting events that the world does not know about.
I bet we will see Mike and Sam resolve in good terms.
I bet we will see Mike and Sam resolve THIS in good terms.
John no. My name isn’t Emily either, but the first name that came to my head. What my name is, remains unimportant (you wouldn’t know who I was anyway, just a random lawyer).
You cannot impose cultural values from one country onto another. The decision behind this reeks of lack of cross cultural awareness. Sometimes living in a big country, people lose sight of this fact. How about asking the target audience i.e. those in the UK what they feel? Perhaps they should go and set up an alternative network? Use TCUK contacts on upcoming.org as a starting point.
Bertil, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Joe Doe – I lived in the States 3 months this year (spend at least a month there each year). I have 15 members of my family who live there. My partner is American. In my example I included the British Empire as an example of telling other countries how to do things. Don’t jump to conclusions in this respect.
“The point being, if your boss says remove it, and you feel otherwise, it is not a cultural issue, the same happens around the world for all journalists.” This still won’t pass with an Employment Tribunal, for the grounds of dismissal – there’s procedures you need to follow.
Congratulations on making it an even bigger issue than it already was. I wasn’t aware of Loic’s comment nor Sam’s commentary until after you terminated your relationship with him. So it seems to me that, by your actions, you’ve actually done more harm to the situation than Sam did.
I call bullshit on Arrington.
Mike – E-mail me. About my supposed “suspension” of my blog – Technically Speaking. Need to talk to you. – Rex