Michael Arrington

The magazine reports on Arrington’s growing influence and how a group of Dutch entrepreneurs gatecrashed his house looking for an introduction, the state of his rented home office which it says is a mess and includes a futon for out-of-town entrepreneurs, and how TechCrunch has clashed with other media. Arrington:

I’m human. I’ve put my entire life into this blog, and when I’m attacked, it’s emotional. I’m going to react sometimes — that’s just me. Does that mean I’m flawed? Yeah. Does that mean I’m not being 100 percent efficient about business? Yeah. But it really hurts when people attack me, and I think people who don’t respond aren’t very human or very interesting.

Arrington speaks on a panel of bloggers about the state of the media at the ONA conference. He blogs about the event:

I thought this was going to be an attempt to bridge the gap between blogging and big media. All I saw was a fear and an unassailable resistance to change.

He says Digg is more interesting than the New York Times as the crowd decides what goes on the front page, not an anonymous editor, that mainstream media report stories late, and there is no discussion.

And third, I encouraged journalists who were stuck in the big media machine, with their career going nowhere, to consider blogging as an alternative (I was also going to say that I was hiring, and for people to contact me, but I never was able to say that).

He says a Times reporter condemns his comments about puff pieces and that even other bloggers on the panel disagree.

Instead of sparking an intelligent debate I was roundly attacked. It’s the first time I addressed “real” journalists head on, and all I saw was fear, loathing and disdain.

Arrington starts a nine-month vacation in a rented beach condo in L.A.

All I did was work out, surf, and watch movies. I watched almost every movie at Blockbuster — three a day for a year.

The company is sold to First Data for $32 million. Arrington:

I made enough to buy a Porsche. Not much more.