Alexia Tsotsis

Meta-commentary via gif — marissamayr

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:09:58 -0400

Meta-commentary via gif — marissamayr

Closure

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:52:00 -0400

For those of you that followed and helped me get through my car wreck around this time last year: This week, arbitration ruled that the guy who ran a red, injured me and totaled my car was 100% at fault (he denied responsibility at the scene of the accident).

So almost year later, I get some closure. And a check.

Pro tip: Never get hit by a car. It messes with you.

Thank you again friends and family and especially my team at TechCrunch for making this terrible experience slightly less terrible. Thank you.

explore-blog: Ernest Hemingway reading The New York Times in...

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:35:31 -0400

explore-blog:

Ernest Hemingway reading The New York Times in bed, naked – can’t cover as much with an iPad… By his side, surprisingly, a dog. Photograph by George Leavens.

The Media Hates Itself

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:54:00 -0400

I’m tired of writing about general interest news on TechCrunch. Namely because I’m tired of debating what *is* a tech story and having to have a hardcore filter thus, because of optics and the prominence of our publication.

In the course of this weekend I’ve read the Society of Professional Journalism’s “Code of Ethics” three times, just to figure out if in actuality I am a journalist. As far as I can tell, I am not one. Because I have a huge problem with other people approving of and being comfortable with what I write. Because I don’t think conflicts of interest are avoidable. And a lot more reasons.

Also, as hard as it it is to admit, I would probably go ballistic if I had to subscribe to the approval mechanisms that exist in other, more traditional, news organizations, or more than ephemerally have deal with the kind of postgame holier-than-thou judgment and analysis that is par for the course in the traditional media industry, which very clearly hates itself.

From The New York Times today, covering the coverage of the Boston bombing coverage.

“Even good reporters with good sources can end up with stories that go bad,” says this article.

THANKS. NO SHIT. Yes, we are human, we make mistakes. Looking for someone to blame is the most basic of our behaviors, and gets amplified at collective moments of unease: “Media (And Especially Reddit) Is To Blame For Boston Tragedy,” is what we’ve been doing all week. Basically.

This sucks. Do better. You’re paid to write the truth, not to eloquently throw others under a meta-analysis bus. The New York Times should change its name to Hindsight Is 20/20.

That’s all for now, I’m going to get back to scheduling guest posts.

Image via gomery

"For the most part, we all just stay in our houses, alone, making videos."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:54:00 -0400

““For the most part, we all just stay in our houses, alone, making videos.””

- Jenna Marbles

Fear Of Missing Out On Tragedy, Not On Pageviews

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:02:00 -0400

My colleague MG Siegler has written something pretty damning about the way tech blogs cover general news stories, implicating TechCrunch and some others as “profiteering assholes” because of how we chose to cover the tragic Boston Marathon attacks.

MG brings up some good points, especially that tech blogs routinely ignore ongoing general interest stories (the Syrian Civil War, for example) but tend to pounce like hungry lemmings on this sort of “hot” spot news.

But MG is wrong about the motivation behind the knee jerk, and often inaccurate, posting happening on Twitter, Facebook and tech blogs, which have learned to mirror the news pace of Facebook and Twitter. It’s more likely the fear of missing out on collective grief that’s causing us to rush to post, not the fear of missing out on pageviews, or uniques or your human eyeball metric of choice.

Anna Noth calls the tendency “tragedy FOMO,” “We don’t want to seem like we’re ignoring what’s going on. And it’s possible that’s what’s leading us to post publicly about tragedy when we don’t actually have much to say.”

At least in our case, the process isn’t intentional or as strategic as “Ooh page views. Preciousss.” I think it might come from a deeper part of the limbic system, “Oh my god, what awful breaking news. Don’t know how to deal with the emotions it brings up. Let’s post!”

Which isn’t necessarily right, and I am not necessarily happy with the way TechCrunch covered this story, at least initially: People are used to tech blogs doing a fast, sloppy job on breaking tech stories, but big world news stories, especially about the loss of human lives, need more care and attentiveness then a rewrite or tweet aggregation. Social media is now just media. Is “News Breaks On Media” really a story? Proceed with caution.

As software is swallowing up everything, arguably every article can be massaged into a tech angle — And as of yet there’s no tribunal to designate which stories are appropriately tech. MG’s rules are inevitably going to be different than someone else’s, yours.

But there shouldn’t be a ban on exploring the tech news angle on a given topic, because technology now affects all the things. (Though there should be a ban on saying stuff like, “We cover the culture of now” with a straight face.)

My rules so far:

1) Question whether your impulse to cover a story is motivated by FOMO, or, especially, pageviews and refrain from doing so if so.

2) If you do cover for a tech publication, focus on tech and be as smart as you can about it.

3) Be prepared for someone to call you an asshole.

Should Probably Rethink My "Exaggerate For Effect" Strategy

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:05:09 -0500

Better Than The Alternative

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:35:00 -0500

I once met Gloria Steinem. In 2006, I worked as a temp receptionist at the fancy New York City hair salon where she got her hair done.

After I checked her in for her appointment, I asked her, having read about the seemingly insurmountable obstacles she faced in trying to accomplish her life’s work, “Why did you do it? Why did you fight so hard for what you believed in? Did you just persevere or something?”

And she responded, “I did it because it was better than the alternative.”

The TechCrunch guys try to explain the Tesla controversy to me...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:46:00 -0500

The TechCrunch guys try to explain the Tesla controversy to me …

Uber For Therapists

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:17:33 -0500

Uber For Therapists:

max-levchin:

What other businesses can we expect to emerge in analog-data-driven, central-intelligence queue marketplace businesses? Some interesting ones are probably already being built: a market for private neighborhood security (off-duty cops)? An auction for short-term patent licenses (litigator included)? Technology already enables efficient redistribution for your spare change: it’s Kickstarter and AngelList. We will definitely see dynamically-priced queues for confession-taking priests, and therapists!

12 Days

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 13:52:11 -0500

12 Days:

parislemon:

So when I said:

I also can’t help but wonder if maybe this is a message from Facebook: don’t want to come work with us? Fine, we’ll clone your service in a couple weeks and ship it to a billion users.

Yeah, my bad. It was 12 days.

On Mourning And Internet Self-Expression

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:02:00 -0500

People deal with shock in different ways. While most of us sit at our desks waiting for the Internet to insufficiently answer our questions as to why the Sandy Hook shootings happened, many of us are also dealing with the banalities of day-to-day work on a pre-holiday Friday; “It is terrible what happened in Connecticut. Did you get my email about Monday’s meeting?”

These types of conversations around tragic events, both online and offline, cause existential discord: There are very few people who wouldn’t agree that the shooting of children (children!) is an extremely horrific event. We are definitely in the majority.

But it is okay to talk about work right now just like it’s okay to be extremely distraught over this news. Humans have very strange and different ways of processing sadness.

When I found out what is possibly some of the saddest news I’ve ever received, I drove from Huntington Beach to LA and sat silently in my car in the parking lot of a public library for 3 hours. And then drove back. Inexplicably.

And no, I did not tweet about it and won’t post what it is here — Because I prefer to deal with some things privately.

But it’s fine if you want to tweet about your feelings regarding the Connecticut shooting, or anything really. Or not. And if some of you don’t feel like writing or sharing a story about a photosharing app (or do) for the next couple of hours, that’s okay too.

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:57:33 -0500

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

— This describes what sets founders apart

(via roelofbotha)

I'll Do My Best

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:18:00 -0500

I'd Kill To Get "Dog With A Blog" Writing For TC

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:38:00 -0500

”Dog With A Blog” currently exists, as a children’s TV show. Our kids are going to be much different than we are.

famoustechquotes: Sarah AustinActor, “Silicon Valley” Really...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:52:55 -0400

famoustechquotes:

Sarah Austin
Actor, “Silicon Valley”

Really don’t know what to say here other than if I said something like this one of my parents would slap me.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:21:00 -0400

“There is also a privacy issue with Twttr. Every user has a public page that shows all of their messages. Messages from that person’s extended network are also public. I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website.”

Via.

Role Models

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:34:00 -0400

“Go build awesome stuff and change the world so we can write about it and change the world even more. Because between life and death there is meaning, even if it’s what we create: The value of a role model is that they teach you what’s possible.”

— Eric Eldon, in “Rest In Peace, Charles Alfred Eldon”

What We Reported Last Week

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 12:38:28 -0400

Here. Except now reported by The New York Times.

Image via.

Hope TechCrunch never has to resort to selling people steak.

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:01:22 -0400

Hope TechCrunch never has to resort to selling people steak.