And yet who is watching their behaviors ? Rumor is that Barry Landrew, Landew, CEO of SRA International that has obtained monopolistic contracts with various government agencies,(including our fraud watchers at the GAO!!),probably due to the fact of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel investments in SRA International,is himself addicted to gambling like that Republican pillar of ‘virtues’, Bill Bennett.(Do google search ,’sra international Barry Landew gambling’)

Personally I don’t plan to advertise on my site (which doesn’t get many subscriptions and is a videoblogging site) and would like to look at offering other services and products in the future for financing. But I may take ads at some point if they directly relate to the subject of my site.

The basic problem I have with saying one can’t objectively and substantially review and report with ads, is that it defines intellect as subservient to patronage. I don’t think this is born out by evidence. For example, the person who blew up the tobacco company defense was an employee, Jeffrey Wigand ( http://www.jeffreywigand.com/insider/ ) and it is insiders that whistle blow and reveal company activities. So it is not a de facto result that patronage determines discernment.

The other aspect of Dave’s argument is that the readership will discount any review of a advertisers product. Again, it is the reader’s responsibility to use their intelligence to determine the validity of reviews. If the reader has a de facto discount of journalism based on there being advertising, they are being intellectually lazy. One should not be bound to readership prejudice in their reporting.

This middle ground is what journalists are trained to traverse, they do it every day. Mike, I am guessing you never went to a J-school, but you’re intelligent enough to have absorbed the principles by which journalists work their craft.

You said: “I’d like to get an understanding of what types of advertisements you may actually find useful.” Perhaps to fend off such accusations of bias, you could ask FM to ban ads on your sites from companies you have mentioned, or are going to mention. It would certainly seem weird to have TechCrunch brought to you by Google, or any of the GEMAYA giants. I don’t think anyone would have problems about ads for Wired, film festivals or a shirt maker, as on Boing Boing.

Do what you need to do to keep TechCrunch going.

If that’s for making money, you could probably make much more managing it independently. So I don’t like it.

If that’s an experiment, I don’t like it neither.

I would like it if you would make a creative effort to figure out a way to create a revenue from techcrunch advertising without losing credibility (and ultimately losing techcrunch’s current and potential position).

That would require an innovative and creative formula, a brand new forma-mentis, or something else.

Dave Winer:
your comment is interesting. The part “And of course the advertisers will expect to influence what you write.” is the most interesting one to me:

Is it set in stone that they should *be allowed* to?

Would you be personally able to sell a finite amount of ad space (not getting sponsorized) and still be as objective as now?

I’m curious about this. What do you mean cross-pollinate ideas? Are you expecting to get tip-offs from some of these other blogs about new companies?

There are a lot of reasons I don’t like what FM publishing is doing, and we can talk about some of those things, if you like, at the conference we’re going to later today. But it boils down to this, Silicon Valley has this idea that it defines the world, and that leads it to do things that bring technology to the world with a very bad attitude, one that is not conducive to freedom.

Battelle and FM Publishing are basically a house organ for the Silicon Valley view of things. You didn’t say anywhere in your announcement that you can disagree with them, or what control or influence they may gain by being part of your economic picture. And you need to more than say that, it has to be the FIRST THING you want to reassure your readers about. And now I want to know what TechCrunch is now that you’re directly making money from it. What happens when you criticize one of your advertisers, or one of FM’s investors? Will you look into their businesses with the same vigor you look into others. And don’t be surprised by these questions, because a lot of ad-sponsored writers, both in print and on blogs, won’t look into the businesses of their sponsors, with the lame excuse that they wouldn’t have any objectivity.

That your explanation talked about you but not us tells me that you’re not ready for this Mike. Before this move our guess that what you wrote was merely what occured to you was pretty likely accurate (although even then you might not have been saying things to offend potential advertisers). But it gets much more complicated to read you. And of course the advertisers will expect to influence what you write. You ought to check that out too, and see what happens when you tell them to fuck off (not just verbally but in your public writing).

Finally, I’m sorry I linked so much to TechCrunch in the past, and helped you build the flow and the opportunity to sell that flow to advertisers. I really regret doing it. And I would be less of a person if I didn’t say that publicly.

I’m still your friend, and I don’t use that word lightly, but I am also disappointed.

There are other and better ways to generate revenue than peddle text ads. I believe Phil Kaplan of Fcompany made revenue funding his site through having a subscription-based premium rumor list. Maybe techcrunch can create a premium list to profile certain startups to the VC and others that would pay for the info.

Regards,
Deep

Keep on ballin’

ps. filled out survey in full