NYTimes Tech Editor Reads TechCrunch Every Morning For Story Ideas

Wow. I am so glad I flew down to Seattle last Thursday on the eve of our all day Real Time event and August Capital party. I got a great story on Redfin turning profitable and saw some unlaunched Animoto video products.

But by far the sweetest moment was a brief comment by the New York Times’ Technology Editor Damon Darlin, who sat on the panel with me. Darlin and I exchanged blows last month, some of you may remember, over the notion of “process journalism.” The panel was the first time I’ve met him in person, and the first time we’d communicated since that story.

He was surprisingly affable in person. And I’ll love him forever for saying that he begins every morning by reading TechCrunch and assigning reporters to follow up on interesting stories:

Darlin: As I was thinking about this this morning as I was thinking about what are the possible questions people are going to be talking about and by prepping by of course, as I do every morning by reading TechCrunch throughout the day, and I thought…(laughter)…no I’m serious, there is so much good stuff on this site, that it is overwhelming, there is stuff I don’t really care about, but there is a lot of stuff that I do want to know and want to tell my reporters, make sure you see this thing, we ought to follow up on that. I’m sure everybody in business looks at that in the same way.

JMA: This is being recorded right? There’s video?

All is forgiven, Darlin. And unlike the A.P., we won’t make any fuss over the idea of Hot News. Just keep linking to us, and we’ll stay happy.

See the full video here.