TechCrunch Sheds Another Of Its Old School Writers

After AOL acquired TechCrunch, the popular tech blog started going through a lot of changes. They weren’t all immediately noticeable, but it didn’t take too long for things to be very publicly coming apart at the seams.

That’s no slight on TechCrunch as it stands today. It still has writers that deserve the respect of being taken seriously. Some of the old school TechCrunch writers are still there, for that matter. It’s just that they keep leaving, one by one. Nobody’s saying TechCrunch can’t continue to thrive as a quality tech publication, but there’s no denying that things are rapidly changing.

It began mainly when founder Michael Arrington had that whole Crunchfund thing blow up in the media. If you care enough to be reading this story, you’re probably already familiar with that story. Other writers followed Arrington out the door. Paul Carr was early to do so. Others that have since left include: MG Siegler, Sarah Lacy, CEO Heather Harde, Robin Wauters, and now it’s Jason Kincaid. Forgive me if I left any out.

For those who have been reading TechCrunch for a substantial amount of time, it’s easy to see that this is the bulk of the writers that made the blog what it would become.

Arrington would go on to start his Uncrunched blog. Some of us wondered if this would become the next TechCrunch eventually. That changed when PandoDaily was launched earlier this year, led by Lacy, and also including writing from Arrington, Siegler and Carr. It will not be surprising to anyone if Kincaid and some of the others end up writing for PandoDaily as well (I should point out that Siegler still does contribute to TechCrunch some).

Here are a few tweets from TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld and Kincaide himself. Kincaid’s links to his explanation.

In other AOL Tech publication staff loss news, Engadget Editorial Director Joshua Fruhlinger is reportedly leaving for TMZ.