On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.
After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.
The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.
This was not one of our full time writers, and so the frequency of posts was light. Nevertheless, we’ve also deleted all content created by this person on our blogs. We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren’t tainted in any way, but to be sure we’ve removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.
Our attorneys have advised us not to disclose the name of the individual because the person is not a legal adult. We also think that, given the intern’s age, it may not be appropriate to make their identity public.
We are all shaken here at TechCrunch – this is someone who was our friend and who we trusted to be honest with our readers. Our hope is that the intern learns something from this experience and grows into the kind of person that will be more welcome in this community.
I apologize to each one of you. I promise that we will always maintain complete transparency with you on how we operate, even when it isn’t such an easy thing to do.
What did you expect when you took on kids and gave them access to one of the most read blogs on the internets?
May be they believed his hard work and allowed him in, who did his childish acts. Good to see that he is now removed.
he or she
It’s he.
This “kid” has revealed what kind of man he may be one day and it’s a sorry one. Character is among the few valuable traits we have and if yours is warped to this extent and at this early stage of your life it’s a hard thing to mend. I suspect Daniel’s unethical leanings preceded his TechCrunch employment and will continue after; charming and bright as he seems to be.
Bravo TC and Michael – I am touched by your transparency.
I hope you’re joking old man.
It’s a one off case, Do n’t think all the kids would be like him
This underage child should be fed to Arrington’s imaginary stalker. This underage child should be strapped to the window of Arrington’s car so that the next time someone spits on Arrington from the street, the spit hits the child.
This child should be punished in every way imaginable.
He’s a kid, he made a mistake, HE OWNED UP TO IT, and you’re a jackass. If you’ve never been a kid then your dead. If you’ve never made a mistake, it’s because you’ve never done anything worth messing up. In other words, this kid’s accomplishments already outweigh your whole life.
You’re just another faceless fish in a giant sea of dipshits. Go to hell.
OH bullshit
i’ve known teenagers with far more integrity than this little turd.
he got greedy, he pretty much came close to tainting the techcrunch name
i’m glad he’s gone but damn.. will he really learn, or just learn to never get caught?
Removal is too harsh a step. Counselling would have been a better alternative.
Bravo, Michael–a good way to handle a very unfortunate situation.
Right way to handle it.
There’s no better way of reporting it than what mike did. At least, the kid still has his identity secured. Although, I believe many are convince that the kid was the one who wrote this post (now deleted)
Google dashboard to the rescue!
That post is available on Google cache – so now I know who this intern is.
And he is just 15… way to go!
True but there’s one point that should be taken into account as well. I guess the problem here is that the majority of the startups covered by this intern will hardly be happy about having posts about them removed because of the situation – at least those that did not bribe anyone and got their write-ups fairly. Getting covered on TC is a challenge so losing this coverage because of someone else’s inappropriate actions will hurt.
Thanks for being upfront and not sweeping it under the carpet Mike.
Nice that you aren’t disclosing his identity. It’ll give him a chance to make amends.
You forgot that there’s no privacy on The Internet. The person in question is now being attacked on Twitter.
Wow, this is nuts. I wonder who it was?
MG?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Naaa, MG looks 30+ for sure
“But I’m a kid at heart”.
Now you are locked under MG’s Mac-radar
i’m not convinced this kid wasn’t also an illegal intern.
you dont KNOW who it was???
dude, his name is out there.
its not hard to find out and his whole bullshit line about how “In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been.” just made me realize this kid just might end up richer than most of us because lets face it these days stupidity and lack of ethics seems to be rewarded
(yes i’m pissed about this http://consumerist.com/2010/02/ex-merrill-lynch-ceo-john-thain-is-a-ceo-again.html)
Great work Michael on coming out and saying this, admitting the problem and making a commitment to keep the transparency.
Don’t hire kids!
For all you know, the writer could have been family.
This makes a great case for never letting an intern get close to anything important.
Bill Clinton can attest to that.
Attested!
“Never allow family to stand in the way of profit”
6th Rule of Acquisition
Family members make horrible employees. They’re lazy and take shit for granted.
That’s all I have to say.
People have to learn. You can’t not hire kids and expect them to do a good job right off the mark in the future.
Right, our prisons are full of kids, nothing but kids.
because i’m sure adults would never act this way.
How can you just say don’t hire kids? The writers age has nothing to do with it, it’s purely the matter of the writer taking compensation to say good things. This has happened and will happen again.
But blanketing against hiring kids because one person messed up is wrong. If people are unwilling to give younger people experience, we are just guaranteed to make repeat our mistakes again, because kids won’t have any chance to learn from anything but their own mistakes. Find the smart and honest kids. Bring them under your wing and teach them. If you do and get burned, oh well, I have no doubt that both of you will grow from the situation.
if you hire kids, dnt give them authority, they usually are not very cognizant that authority comes with responsibility
As I am a 17-year-old “kid” myself, I have to add my two cents.
First, many people don’t hire “kids”, which can make it very difficult to get a job.
Second, “kids” can be just as responsible as adults. All children are not the same, and neither are all adults.
Generalizations can never do anything but damage their promoter’s reputation.
I completely agree! It has nothing to do with age — adults do terrible things in the business world all the time — AIG for business? Stephen Glass for destroying journalistic integrity? I mean, come on!
Good for TechCrunch for being honest.
glad that this was sorted early on and at least u r honest enough to disclose this and admit lapses committed by someone over there.
Full disclosure = good. Appreciated.
But I dunno “We are all shaken here” just sounded off in the apology…
Clearly, you haven’t had your trust breached.
I think it’s fair to say that if you find out that someone you’ve been working closely with for months has actually been asking for money on the side illegally (the equivalent of taking a bribe), you would also be “shaken”.
Mike– kudos to you for honest journalism. TechCrunch readers will respect your publication all the more for this.
Thx 4 being upfront. Was it Daniel bru?
I did a search for him in their archives. It pulled up a long list of posts so I assumed it wasn’t him. But then I clicked thru to 10 of his posts and they all returned page not found messages. I think it was him.
Wait a minute: bribery has two sides: the one who asks and the one who pays. The post clearly says that someone gave a laptop. OK, the kid is a kid and cannot be named, but the company who paid the bribe is ran by adults who should know better, as did the other (great) organization who whistle blowed the whole thing. Statistically, it is very unlikely that I’ll ever meet or do business with the kid, but there is a greater possibility that I’ll do business with those two companies one day, and I’d love to know which is the socially responsible one and which is the one will compromise its ethical standards in order to get a single blog post. If they exchange laptops for articles, try to imagine what else they might do in exchange for investors’ money, IP, partnerships, contracts etc. Notice that they did not proactively came out clear – as did TC and the whistleblower – but only disclosed the fact after enquired by TC, and probably after understanding the legal consequences they could face bc of their misbehavior.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/25/rocketbox-email-search-apple/
Of course it was him. He should be banned from all events, I was sick of seeing him anyways. Arrington spelled it out. They only had one underage intern.
+1 Great job and a testament to transparency. Thank you.
By deleting all their posts haven’t you indirectly revealed who the person?
Yes, since you can just do a Google “site:” search and click through all the authors till you find the one with all the deleted posts.
But, to be honest, what does it matter? It was a mistake and they’re resolving it. I hope it doesn’t dissuade TC from giving interns a shot in the future
Google never forgets. And come on, it’s not fucking hard to figure it out. Wow, I can’t believe they were so tactless and pretty much ruined the kid’s career.
June spot on. agreed.
perhaps it was the shaking down of startups that ruined the kid’s career, not this post.
Tactless is blatantly taking bribes. If the kid’s career gets ruined, it will be his own fault. You’ve clearly never run a business. How can you even see or breathe with your head so far up your own ass?
The kid ruined the kids career, he was smart enough to get the internship at TC I’m sure he knew very well that what he was doing was not ethical.
It’s tactless to say what you’re doing is “protecting” someone by not revealing his identity… but then obviously knowing that you’re revealing who he is.
They have helped the person immensely.
While the techcrunch insiders will be able to figure this out, this post won’t be the first thing that comes up in a google search result for the writer’s name.
It’s not full protection, but, it is protection.
Really sad this happened.
I have to agree with June on this. Either disclose the name outright or make sure it stays unknown. This “our lawyers” stuff is vengeful.
“We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren’t tainted in any way, but to be sure we’ve removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.”
How is that tactless? The kid’s career isn’t ruined — what’s important is how he chooses to accept responsibility for his actions. This is the Internet, we can all be heard and we all have voices.
Agreed, was this story really necessary? Had this not been posted, the deleted TC posts would have probably have gone unnoticed.
Still, I highly this incident will ruin the kid’s career. It’s only an internship that we’re talking about here.
TC didn’t ruin the kid’s career. The kid ruined the kid’s career. That’s like blaming the government for ruining Bernie Madoff’s career.
Taking bribes for posts? This kid has a broken moral compass, and will end up in prison, mark my words.
And it has nothing to do with his age. Honest, good kids shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush as this crook, or denied opportunities.
He made his bed and should lie in it. He may be a kid, but I’m sure he should understand ethics.
Sucks that such a thing happened but being honest about it and taking steps to remedy the situation, as you have done, is a great move. Thanks for sharing!
Jon @ WoodMarvels.com
I hope he will learn something from that and never sell his soul for a quick buck… corruption is everywhere…. sad …
By deleting all their posts haven’t you indirectly revealed their identity?
Yes, he did just that. I don’t like the fact that Arrington goes along under the pretense of protecting the kid’s identify then all but spells out his name. Any one (especially the Tech Crunch crowd) can figure it out.
Bribery is always wrong but he’s a kid. At that age, you should have some room to make mistakes and learn from it. This post will hurt a bright future.
Sounds like you need to hire college interns instead of minor aged high school interns.
The threat of legal recourse will be much more effective with an exclusively adult aged writing staff.
~ V.
Yes, but you can chain kids in your basement whereas that’s not legal for college interns.
Yeah, and people over 18 tend to want to be PAID for doing work (’specially college educated people). In this economy especially many companies use the term “Internship” as a way to get cheap, if not free, labor.
Epitome of why you are successful and such a classy way to handle the situation. Honored to share the space with you.
Thank you for this post.
Dang. now who am I gonna get to write my stories?
Just kidding
Mike- Good work.
I understand why your are shaken and commend the disclosure. We all like to mentor new talent, and it can shake you to your core when principles and trust are violated.
By deleting all their posts haven’t you indirectly revealed their identity to some people?
Wow, I really respect how you handled this. Corporations should take note.
Was it MG? coz he writes craps most of the time…
Interns aren’t allowed to receive any type of reward? I don’t know the rules to being an intern…
As someone who is currently going through the process of finding an internship, I can address at least some of this. I do not know the rules for high school interns (since Mike states that the person in question is not a legal adult, I am assuming they are not yet in college), but for college-level interns, the “reward” is usually either academic credit or a fair salary.
Journalism is one of my areas of interest, and having researched literally hundreds of internship possibilities, I have not come across a single one where receiving goods such as a laptop is a suitable reward. In fact, according to the Federal Trade Commission, being “sponsored” for a blog post, as apparently this intern was, and not prominently acknowledging it is illegal as of last year.
As an intern, he would have been treated like a regular employee, and would have had to abide by the same regulations that Mike, MG, and every other blogger on the internet has to follow. The fact that he is a minor makes almost no difference in this instance. This would seem to be a fairly large black mark against him the next time he tries to get a job; after all, some commenters have already mentioned how easy it is to discover the identity behind the one responsible. I have not worked in a human resources department, but everything I have heard about the hiring process includes a check online of just about anything imaginable.
“Reward” isn’t the term. He was accepting bribes. I don’t think it’s even permitted to accept gifts.
Bribe is such an offensive term, let’s use “lobbying” instead.
As a politics geek, that term seems to fit, though the startup was lobbying him, so the language would need to be changed around slightly
And @Shay Guy, it isn’t permitted as per FTC regulations issued in the past year.
The little respect I had for this individual is now out the window. Too be honest, it’s not surprising after you now think about some of the posts this person has done in the past.
Thank you for being honest and remember there are adults out here who need a job.
so basically hes selling TC’s blog space?
Thank you for being honest and remember there are adults out here who need a job.
Credibility gained through an honest disclosure of events almost always outweighs any damage done.
Good work Tech Crunch for leading by example.