CNET and TechCrunch in Cross-Snipe

Posted on November 29, 2006

A snarky post on CNET by CNET's Caroline McCarthy said that TechCrunch needs a copy editor because a Crunchnotes post misspelled BitTorrent in the headline. The article is called, "Looking for a copy editor in a crunch."

In a recent post on TechCrunch, for instance, founder and blogger-in-chief Michael Arrington posted a summary of recent shake-ups at file-sharing site BitTorrent. The only problem is, the spelling of the site's name fluctuated between "BitTorrent" and "BitTorent" throughout the post--with the misspelling in the headline, even. (If it's been corrected by now, check the comments for evidence of the mishap.)
We'll forgive Mr. Arrington for this one and spare him any jabs that involve removing one of the r's from his own name. After all, it's morning, and when I don't have enough coffee in the morning I do dumb things like confuse TypePad with MovableType. And yes, typos do get through even at professional news sites with lots of writers and editors.

Apparently, even the BitTorrent logo on the TechCrunch post was wrong according to the comments underneath it. It was a bigger mistake than a simple typo.

Michael Arrington struck back against CNET with this response.

That's ok, I can take a jab from them. While CNET writers were all cozy in bed last night, Om and I were competing to break the Bittorent story. That's why blogs will win, and CNET will lose.

Everyone makes mistakes now and then but Scripting.com didn't let the error pass without writing, "I was thinking the other way, that TechCrunch has lost something now that it's more than Arrington. There was a charm to TC when it was just MA sledding downhill at 80,000 MPH on the seat of his pants."