Natali Del Conte’s last day with TechCrunch was last Friday. I’ll let her make her own announcement regarding what she’ll do next, but I want to wish her luck on behalf of the entire TechCrunch team. She was here just three weeks, but it’s clear she’s going to be a star at whatever she chooses to do.
Natali gave me a couple of reasons for leaving. She’s gotten an offer from another company (again, I’ll let her make any announcements on that), but was willing to stay on part time with TechCrunch. I appreciate that, but I want our writers to be completely focused on TechCrunch and not working with competitors. 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.
Not that you haven’t been criticized enough, either, but if you really wanted to let her explain it then you shouldn’t have posted any of this until after she made her announcement. Sorry to say that to me, it looks as though you just walked all over that.
That’s too bad, Mike. She seemed to be doing a nice job. I can imagine the comments would get pretty ridiculous after a while. It’s amazing what people turn into when they get behind a computer.
That really sux. Comment bullying can be quite off-putting.
I saw this one coming, honestly. The user comments in her articles were always pretty sexist and it just shows how immature those of us here in silicon valley can be.
And then morons united are surprised that there are not more women in this business.
Sad to see Natali go, she had a different and fresh style.
Sorry to see her go
liked her style
Michael,
I’m sorry you’re dealing with some of these growing pains (and sorry that Natalie had to experience some of the darker sides of the internets).
I’ll say this though; my respect for you has increased dramatically in the last couple weeks. Your honesty and sincerity shine through quite a bit. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.
Best,
David Ulevitch
I have to admit I thought she lacked the experience/knowledge in the industry to really give the kind of perspective people come to TC for but she was adapting and improving fairly quickly. I liked the idea of a female writer/perspective though I hope if you bring on a new one, it’s somebody with more of a background/history in the business because that perspective is a big part of why I come here.
And let me add, you really have to have a thick skin if you’re going to be a girl in this business. I know the guys got a little crazy (we were all annoyed) but if you hold your own, it dies down.
It was really lame that readers were doing it, but I can’t help but to think deep down, anybody’d be at least a little flattered.
i am quite disappointed to see Natali leave. she brings a fresh perspective to tech industry news and i’m going to miss that on this site.
good luck in the future Natali. we all know you’ll do great.
sad to see her go but hopefully she will be replaced by someone with a bit more experience in the techcrunch related issues. I think she will need to grow a thick skin if shes gonna survive. The sexist stuff is unforgiveable but people saying that they do not like what she is writing about is fair enough.
Comments are a funny things, I have had a few times where people have not agreed with me and they have gotten real personal with me quickly. Digg comments are worse than anything I have seen here.
WTF? She’s there three weeks and leaves? That means she started looking for a job the second she started. She used you, dude. And you fell for it.
Have you thought about turning off comments altogether? They feel more like self promotion and trolling than anything else. A boingboing approach could be good, linking to technorati for discussion and publishing updates with particularly interesting feedback.
I read techcrunch for the editors’ reporting & opinions; the comments stopped being useful a while ago.
The good news is that this is a new service line for crunchboard.com. You find talented up and comers, sign them to respresentation agreements, and then give them uber-exposure on Techcrunch. In the last month you could have made $10k in recruiting fees and produced a lot of good content at no cost to you in exchange for promoting the blogger.
Mike, you should post an opening on Crunch Board
Mike – don’t you feel any responsibility with dealing with the sexism comments? I am a bit put off that you never did anything about it. You are the owner of this business and you allowed your employee to be harassed. Would you allow that to an employee if you were a manager at mcdonalds? I think not.
Don’t you feel any responsibility for allowing that behavior to continue? You delete comments all the time, but left those that picked on her looks. Really disappointing overall from the king of web 2.0 says businessweek and wsj.
pat – yes of course I feel responsible. however, comments are emailed to the writer who wrote the post. I told Natali she could delete any comment at all, for any reason. I also offered to have someone else review the comments for her. She didn’t want that.
The only other step I could have taken would be to turn off comments completely. And we wouldn’t really be a blog anymore if we did that.
Mike, I emailed you with a solution about the comments :p
Cheers
Bummer.
Mike i must disagree — at a minimum the comments should have been removed from public consumption – even if that meant hiring a temp to sit and watch every minute. instead she had to see it continue – which my bet is that others figured they would since some got by so to speak.
Whether or not the comments were eventually deleted seems to be besides the point — and what was, was the content of some of those comments.
It says less about how Mike handled the case, and more about the kind of people who frequent TechCrunch and the web2.0 community as a whole.
Mike,
Sorry to see her go as well. She has real talent. As far as comments go, I believe in the Living Room Policy. It has two parts (1) If I have a party in my home and you come in, I have the right to know who you are. If not, I can choose to throw you out and ban you from coming back in. (2) If you come into my Living Room and insult me or my guests, I will ask you to be polite. If you to not comply, I will throw you out and may or may not let you back in at a later date.
She was the weakest writer in your roster. Not saying she’s a BAD writer or a completely CRAPPY writer but that she was simply the weakest compared to Nik and especially Marshall.
Her stuff prior to TechCrunch were borderline fluff pieces. Things to do in Vegas for Variety? Elementary commentary for Dvorak’s show? Her fluff pieces also extended into her pieces for TechCrunch. Amazon.com will stock Wii’s and PS3’s for Christmas? No, really?
I also find it stupid that all these people are asking to abolish the comments completely. That really makes sense. If only real life has a button that lets you kill dissenting opinions from you own instantly. I would surely use it on all of you. God, hello, this is a BLOG. On the Internet. Civility does not come attached automatically and quite frankly that’s the point. It’s a wild and crazy platform that allows for the democratization of people to voice their opinions. You take the lumps with the sugar you hypocritical bastards.
In all honesty I miss the good ol’ Mike kicking ass from the late/early 05/06 period. Without the hype. Without the drama. Just writeups of interesting people doing interesting things outside the confines of Web 2.0 hyperbole.
Have we come to a point where there are literally no more interesting startups left in the world?
Come back for 2007 and kickass, Mike. Please.
I also miss the old web 2.0 action packed TC
Not the TC from three weeks ago, but months ago. I miss the TC that gave me the foolishness to think I could leave full time employment, create a startup, and buzz around in my personal jet within 6 months. Now the fog is clearing and I’m starting to realise what I’ve done. Quick! Help me Mike!
You think Natali had it bad, imagine what female sports writers go through. At least Natali didn’t have to walk into the Facebook locker room and interview Mark Zuckerberg in his underwear. Remember when Joe Namath tried to make out with Suzi Kolber on national TV?
Clearly, Mr. Arrington hired Natali because her looks made up for her lack of experience, because while she is clearly bright and full of potential, her writing read like generic AP copy. I have to admit, the strategy worked, because I’ve visited TechCrunch much more often since I saw those pictures of Natali at the Google holiday party.
I hope this doesn’t sound like a criticism, because I think Natali clearly enjoys technology and could have become great at this job. I’m genuinely sad about her leaving,
and I hope that Michael finds another female writer to keep the site more colorful.
Good luck, Natali!
Lesson: Don’t read the comments. Or at least wait two months and then skim them. Or perhaps delegate comment reading to someone who can filter them and only pass on factual corrections and the like. Give a phone number and e-mail out in the comment form and tell people to call you or e-mail you if they really want to get some information to you.
I think the real reason she left is that the stink from Michael’s meltdown was threatening to stick to her. Who wants to be associated with such a public embarassment?
The Empire is falling?
How is it possible to point out the Joe Namath incident and act like him at the same time?
I’m a pretty regular reader and I like that people can comment – a lot of the comments posted are insightful and helpful so I hope they aren’t taken down.
As far as those regarding Natali, they were pretty ridiculous and probably should have been taken down, but it probably wasn’t the main reason she left. I think it was best for her and TC.
Mike,
I’ve been wanting to say this for months but tonight is the night. Your open and direct approach in dealing with cutting edge news, gossip, and politics is highly admired by myself and many others.
Regardless of some of the issues that are now creeping in with the growth your experiencing, I personally think what you have built up here in the last year and a half is one heck of a success story and I look to you and TC daily for my own niche publishing startup for inspiration, guidance, and ideas.
What you’ve created and given back to so many of us who enjoy your posts, research, and analysis completely out weighs pissing off a few conference owners here, a journalist there, and some industry icon over there. I think it takes a heck of a lot of character to continuously have each and every post, idea, and reaction put under a microscope for the world to see – and comment on – and still come back for more. That’s quite a fantastic level of dedication – and that can’t be faked.
Even with all the drama and sensationalism that’s building up with TC, I still get the feeling that underneath it all is an average joe who simply wants to write about what he loves. And it’s because of this that I subscribe to TC and the personal brand you’ve been able to create. I, along with many many more, will continue to support TC and its properties long into the future.
Keep on keeping on Mike.
Really like Natalie. But she had her reason for leaving. About the comments bullying, I think those who tried to makes Nat looks bad, actually reflects the author of comment as immature.
If this is the episode of Apprentice, I will definitely not voting Nat out. She is a true learner and hardworker.
I didn’t particularly like Natali’s writing — the pieces were fluffy, her writing style was sort of boring, and it seemed like her subject matter and the companies that she covered just didn’t rise to the level of quality and selectivity that we’d come to expect from this place. Perhaps with some time and practice, her stuff would’ve gotten better, but we’ll never know. None of this has anything to do with her gender, whatsoever. There are plenty of bad male writers out there, too.
Some of the comments were inexcusable, sure, and that’s really unfortunate, but I think that TC will be a better place without her articles.
Hope your next gig treats you better, Natali.
Mike,
That is quite sad that she would be there all of 3 weeks and up and leave. Comments can be brutal, and that’s the nature of the game. She should have realized that people loved her writing, as you don’t get the brutal comments unless you stir up some emotion or really tick someone off.
That’s when you know you have arrived.
Rex
Natali gave me a couple of reasons for leaving.
If you come up with that many concerns in a job you only worked for three weeks, you didn’t really want the job in the first place.
Is it just me or have we gotten a lot more sensitive lately? I haven’t seen anything approaching the levels of a good Flame war like those of usenet, but people are complaining of online incivility more and more often. I think we all need thicker skins…
I think sexual comments are highly inappropriate.
Regardless of what you told her she can do Micheal you could of stepped in and stopped it, or took some recourse of action as you have done for yourself.
Natali, you should of have stayed. You generated good content. While not all Web 2.0 related, it may have lead to a new blog all together.
But all said and done, Good Luck Natali. And I can understand why you have left.
Damn that sucks Natali had better Posts than mike did ..
Thats a shame, I really like her style of writing. She added a bit of Glamour to the site as well. (no offence to your and rest of the guys mike!)
I wonder if these problems run across to other sites too? Like for the women working at GigaOm. Or is the “Mike Arrington Affect” what attracts more of these problems?
Bad news, I had a scheduled conference call with her… anyone who takes her place and can have the conference call with me ?
Obviously it’s somewhat sad to see her go, she was growing on the audience at large, however having said this she wasn’t a cut on you Mike, and her research in terms of knowing the history of firms prior to actually posting (the skype fiasco/ post for example) was lacking, if comments were hurting her it was only due to her own inadequacies as a writer on the site, unfortunate and as mean as that may seem….and yes, I was one of them. She needed correcting far too often.
Mike,
I lost quite a bit of respect for your site (and a little bit of respect for you, too) when you tolerated and essentially maintained a platform for hateful comments.
The best blogs — and the best bloggers — allow dissenting and even very highly critical comments but firmly draw the line at personal attacks. Insisting upon civility and respect, IMHO, wouldn’t hurt the diversity or overall quality of commentary… but rather would have protected an environment where writers and commenters alike felt comfortable and willing to share thoughtful ideas and opinions.
I don’t give a whit about “free speech” except from the government. Privately run blogs are like a house party I think. You piss on the furniture, you threaten the hosts, you get thrown out on your ass and not let back in.
Bigotry and hatred beget more bigotry and hatred.
In closing, I can only hope that the asshole misogynistic commenters don’t have daughters of their own, or if they do, they somehow set a far better example for their children when they’re not anonymous and “protected” online.
I think it’s worth noting, at this point, that Natali wanted to stay with TechCrunch part time – it’s obvious that the comments weren’t the issue in her taking another gig, or she wouldn’t have wanted to stay on board.
She was a virtually no name journalist before this – great track record, but one in a million. I think her stint and even all the drama, has helped her more than hurt her and I can bet she knows that as well.
As far as comments go about her work, people do it with every writer on here who has typos or isn’t up to snuff. I don’t think anybody can argue that Natali didn’t seem to have experience in this industry that readers are used to even if she wrote well. As far as the inappropriate comments, welcome to the world of online journalism. There’s a reason why I have rarely showed what I look like on my site.
A lot of you are pretty lame.
Wow, you really need to get a PR wizard Michael, this is getting shameless …
Any1 knows about her personal blog site? Or does she have one?
thats a shame. Natali – wish you the all the best. You brought a unique writing style to TC.
It’s a shame that Natali left. Having a female perspective is unique. But in this “technology” industry whether it be ’startup’ news or gaming…it takes time
I wish her all the best of luck
That’s unfortunate that Natali was made to feel uncomfortable. I’ve felt anonymous commenting has produced cowardly, hateful environments.