Some tech journalists and their lack of ethics

Newsweek technology editor Dan Lyons writes about how a tech journalist, Michael Arrington, who has started a venture capital fund, and his cronies are now bad mouthing another tech journalist for writing negatively about a company that they invested in.

Lyons writes, “Separately another VC recently told me his firm recently had passed on opportunities to invest in some new tech blogs that were proposing a business model he described as ‘hush money.’ Potential investors were being offered ‘most favored nation’ status for themselves and their portfolio companies if they put money into the site.

“This is what now passes for ‘journalism’ in Silicon Valley: hired guns and reformed click-whores who have found a way to grab some of the loot for themselves. This is perhaps not surprising. Silicon Valley once was home to scientists and engineers — people who wanted to build things. Then it became a casino. Now it is being turned into a silicon cesspool, an upside-down world filled with spammers, liars, flippers, privacy invaders, information stealers — and their grubby cadre of paid apologists and pygmy hangers-on.

“The most delicious part of Siegler’s rant on the tech media is the final paragraph:

The only thing I can offer is the advice to take everything you read in the technology press with a grain of salt. Perhaps several. The likelihood that at least part of it is nonsense is very strong. And stronger by the day.

“For once, I could not agree more.”

Read more here.