High School 2.0

22 Nov ’06

Chalk this up as yet another difference between the blogtropolis and the mainstream media – you will see very few high school smackdowns by one MSM outlet of another.

Today’s brouhaha involves Mike Arrington dropping lots of tinder on the fire that brewed up this week over Jason Calacanis’s departure from Netscape, when Nick Denton at Valleywag had questions about why Jason had actually left – traffic issues? For present purposes the reason is beside the point – what’s interesting (to me, at least) is that these guys can’t seem to keep their hands off each other’s reputations.

But in today’s twist, Mike Arrington, who as I’ve blogged recently now must be seen as a Valleywag scoop competitor, uses his bully pulpit to take gratuitous shots at Denton, in much the same way he accuses Denton of taking shots at Calacanis (“Denton has always played second fiddle to Jason, never quite achieving the same level of success. Many say this is because he can’t handle it when his writers get more attention than he does”). It’s all quite interesting, but only as a lesson in media social anthropology. But really, is it just me, or do these guys all seem just a touch too fascinated with each other?


Update: Lots of Sturm und Drang about this today. I think what’s next is that Nick has to create a site for Valley business news (ValleyCrunch?), and Mike has to create a site for Valley gossip (CrunchBuzz?).

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