ParisLemon

Nicholas Carlson didn’t like my latest post about Instagram. That’s cool. Different tastes, etc. But here’s what’s problematic with his post:

The problem is NOT that Siegler decided to hold a story after talking to a source. There are tons of good reasons to do that.

The issue is that Siegler had a bad reason to do that.

“When in doubt, defer to the entrepreneur.”

To be clear: At Business Insider, we do not view it as our responsibility to “defer to the entrepreneur.”

Simply put: that’s exactly why Business Insider will never be TechCrunch.

Maybe they don’t want to be — which is fine — but given the amount they write about TechCrunch and how often they try to poach TechCrunch writers, it sure seems like they want to be TechCrunch.

But there’s clearly a fundamental difference in thinking here. Carlson seems upset that we didn’t act more like “traditional” journalists. Setting aside how rich that is coming from someone whose previous career highlight was Valleywag, it’s a confusing stance. 

It never seems to occur to these people trying to emulate the success of TechCrunch that TechCrunch was successful because we didn’t do things the way they’re normally done. This disregard for the status quo didn’t hold us back. It set us free. 

Not sure why this is such a difficult concept to grasp. People stick to rules that aren’t actually real. Rules that no one gives a shit about. Do what you think is right to do. People will either read or they won’t.