kidmercury

Oh boy! I woke up this morning to see that the web/tech blogosphere had exploded into an ALL OUT WARFARE. The warriors: A-list blogger Fred Wilson vs. A-list blogger Michael Arrington. The issue? Well, in a word, journalism.

Here's Fred's post hatin' on TechCrunch's journalism. Here's Arrington's post hatin' on Fred.

C'mon guys. If Paris and Nicole can patch things up, I'm sure you guys can too.


Of course, as soon as I saw this, I knew only one other person would find it as entertaining as me: Loren Feldman.

Here's Feldman's take on the full blown war that has erupted between Michael Arrington and Fred Wilson.

So now we have a three way hate virus going on: Wilson hatin' on TechCrunch (and thus, indirectly hatin' on Arrington), Arrington hatin' on Wilson, and Feldman hatin' on Arrington and Wilson.

But I'm going to one up Feldman on this issue. I'm going to hate on Arrington, Wilson, and Feldman all in the same post.

Here goes:

1. Arrington. This guy is going to lecture ANYONE on journalism? LOL. Please. Arrington is a guy who gave his readers a big "fuck you" with their little TechCrunch primaries bit. 73% of readers endorse Ron Paul, the obvious technology candidate, and who does Arrington declare to be the candidate officially endorsed by TechCrunch? John "let's start wars with everyone, forever, and ruin the economy by doing so" McCain. Arrington is not dumb enough to genuinely support McCain, we all know that. Instead, it's just an example of a "journalist" selling out for a buck, because he thinks he'll get more ad money by supporting McCain. The best part? It won't even work. Arrington's got a great site in TechCrunch, but they are playing the old school game, with way too much focus on traditional content, not enough on community or attention allocation. When such a person lectures on the new rules of journalism, it's hard to take it seriously.

2. Wilson. I don't really see what the big problem is with Fred's post. Maybe he's wrong, maybe he's biased. So what. It ain't exactly a huge deal either way, and being a crybaby about it only serves to give ammo to guys like me and Feldman (thanks for that, by the way ). If you want to hate on Fred, hate on him for being pro-Billary, for worshipping the New York Times, for being friends with J-Dawg and Jeffrey (both of whom have made themselves enemies of the Truth, and hence enemies of Kid Mercury's World), or even for thinking the Rolling Stones are way better than they actually are (they suck....Jagger can't sing, that's almost an objective fact....production quality for their stuff, especially the stuff in the early and mid '60s, sucks.....the only good thing about them is that real bands like Guns n' Roses and Oasis ripped off parts of the Stones but do it a million times better).

3. Feldman. Feldman is a hater, that is his schtick. No worries, I get it, and find it amusing. With that said, he hates on Wilson on an unusually frequent basis, often hating on Fred's portfolio. I'm not sure why that is. Although I do know one thing: if you hate on Fred because of his portfolio, than you don't know what you're talking about. I'm not saying Fred's portfolio is guaranteed money in the bank, but you can see the logic in their investments and it makes a lot of sense. To anyone that actually knows what they are talking about, that is. Anyway, for anyone looking to hate on Fred, see the paragraph above, I gave you plenty of valid reasons.

For anyone looking for what real journalism is, look no further than Alex Jones, a person whom I think is, by a painfully wide margin, the best journalist in America. I started listening to Alex's show, reading his web sites, and watching his movies because I was fascinated with the approach he was taking to journalism and the success he is having; Alex is the first person I've seen who is really playing the new media game the way it should be played, and is succeeding at it (he has a passionate community that any aspiring media mogul would die for....it is the most passionate community on the web by a wide margin; the passion Ron Paul is known for is actually passion that was generated by Alex, Alex simply redirected it to the Ron Paul Revolution because he knows what's up). Anyway, after a few months of listening to his show I realized that not only was his approach revolutionary, but that he's actually telling the Truth too!!!

And the Truth is the biggest difference between new journalism, which is all about the Truth, and old journalism, which is all about covering up the Truth. Let's see if that can be the idea we all get out of the Wilson/Arrington/Feldman/Mercury/[insert your name] hate virus.

Fred Wilson

you are so wrong about the Stones. for much longer than the Beatles, or any other band of note, they produced great rock and roll. True that they have sucked since the early 80s, but still a 20 year run in rock and roll is a long long time.