Yeah that’s right. I have a puppet parody now, too. This is pretty tame stuff compared to the hit job Loren did on Shel israel. Before you hit play, note that there is some offensive language in the video, referring to our recent dispute with Wired.

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How does a big magazine site like Time.com get blogs to link to it? Put up a list of the Top 25 Blogs where readers can vote for their own favorites.

Okay, we’ll take the linkbait. TechCrunch is on the list, but so far only 57 people have bothered to vote. That is completely unacceptable. So please go rate us up the list, loyal readers. You can also vote for other blogs including Boing Boing, the Consumerist, Daily Kos, Engadget, Freakonomics, Indexed, Lifehacker, and The Huffington Post. If you must.

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Blink, and six months go by. Ever since I made the move from Time Inc. to TechCrunch, my life has become a whirlwind of nonstop blog posting, little sleep, and a growing addiction to news feeds, Techmeme, and my Blackberry. Last week, I wrote my 600th post (this one is No. 617). The boxes I brought over from my previous career are still stacked, unopened, in my TechCrunch office. A lone painting from my three-year-old son adorns the wall. I have not had time to unpack or even buy a bookshelf to put things on. Fourteen years worth of stuff, and it still amazes me I don’t need any of it.

The journalist in me has been avoiding this post (too navel-gazing, too self-absorbed), but the blogger in me can’t help it. Media is changing—how it is produced and how it is consumed. The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding and I want to get some thoughts down on this transition before I forget what the old world was like or feel too comfortable in the new one. (Fair warning: If you don’t like long posts, skip this one).

Just as more and more blogs are building up professional writing staffs, more and more newspapers and magazines are requiring that their writers start blogging. A quick glance at the Techmeme Leaderboard, for instance, shows that its top spots are almost evenly split between blogs and traditional news organizations. Note that the blogs are all of the professional variety, complete with writing staffs (TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, Silicon Alley Insider, GigaOm, VentureBeat, etc.) and that the highest ranking news sites (CNET and the New York Times) also have the most active journalist bloggers.

But remember that all the big blogs that have turned professional and are now out there trying to build small media businesses started out as personal. Also, remember that these blogs (TechCrunch included) represent a tiny, tiny sliver of the millions of blogs out there. Unlike others, I don’t draw as sharp a dividing line between professional and personal blogs. Any blogger can rise to the level of contributing to the public discourse. Those that do so on a consistent basis—such as Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Nick Carr, Mark Cuban, Fred Wilson, and others—gain wide followings, and with that a responsibility to their readers that is equal to any journalist’s.

A more useful distinction is that there are sources of information that readers trust and sources of information that they don’t. Once someone reaches that level of trust, their responsibility is to tell the truth as best they can.

For me, blogging and journalism began to blur long ago. I took over the Business 2.0 blog (which became the Next Net) from Damon Darlin, now technology editor at the New York Times. That was back in May, 2005, one month before Michael Arrington started TechCrunch—which just goes to show that Michael and I have been on the same wavelength from the start. Of course, back then, he took blogging much more seriously than I did.

At Business 2.0, my blog was always a side project—although it grew to 50,000 feed subscribers. I was paid to write, package, and orchestrate articles for the print magazine—in addition to other sidelines, which included organizing mini-conferences and dabbling in Web video. Eventually, blogging became more important to the magazine—all writers and editors had to start one. But it could never quite shake that extracurricular tinge.

Working at TechCrunch is a completely different experience. For one thing, I no longer write long-form, narrative journalism. There is not much time for story-telling (except for weekend posts like this one). It is mostly breaking news, reporting facts and providing analysis. At TechCrunch, I am completely focused on blogging, 24/7. With a few exceptions, no single post is very difficult to write (unlike an in-depth magazine article that can require 50 interviews and weeks of travel, for instance). But taken as a whole, blogging is actually harder. That is because the blogging never stops. Just ask my wife and kids, who now mock me by repeating back my new mantra: “I’m almost done, just one more post.”

Putting out TechCrunch is like riding a bullet train. When I jumped aboard, it was already going 150 miles per hour. Six months ago, the main TechCrunch site was attracting about two million visitors a month and it was ranked No. 4 on the Technorati 100 list of the most linked-to blogs. Today, six months later, we are within spitting distance of three million visitors a month (2.9 million, to be exact), and last week we overtook Engadget for the first time to reach the No. 1 spot on the Technorati 100. (We’ll see how long that lasts, the Hufifngton Post is right on our tail).

So what is the TechCrunch formula? It is hard to say other than obsession. The main TechCrunch blog is written by four of us—Michael, Duncan, Mark, and me. (When I began, there were five, but Nick Gonzalez decided to opt for the comparatively saner hours of a startup). Despite our small size, we are a global organization. When not traveling, Michael and Mark write from California, Duncan writes from Australia, and I write from New York. Somebody is always online—often all of us. Michael literally never sleeps. It is really unhealthy.

What we do at TechCrunch is actually pretty simple. We write about Web startups and the larger tech companies that try to either copy or acquire them. Depending on the day, I could be liveblogging the launch of the Amazon Kindle, arguing about free speech in the Internet age, uncovering secret projects at Google, giving Yahoo unsolicited acquisition advice, or writing about a hot new startup.

There is always something else to write about, and not enough time to cover it. But we live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves. We hardly have time to proofread our posts, as anyone who’s come across one of the frequent typos in TechCrunch knows. Luckily, our readers love to point out our mistakes in comments. They are our copy editors and fact checkers. (We love you guys). Our philosophy is that it is better to get 70 percent of a story up fast and get the basic facts right than to wait another hour (or a day) to get the remaining 30 percent. We can always update the post or do another one as new information comes in. More often than not, putting up partial information is what leads us to the truth—a source contacts us with more details or adds them directly into comments.

Some people question whether TechCrunch is even a blog anymore rather than a professional media site. But that distinction is becoming increasingly meaningless. The truth is that we are both. We compete with traditional news organizations, but with a small fraction of their staff. That is our competitive advantage. We certainly cover the news and do original reporting, but we also discuss news reported by others and are not shy about voicing our personal opinions. We are as much a filter as a source.

There is something about blogging—the immediacy, the give and take, the point of view—that helps it compete with traditional media for attention. And we don’t want to lose that. We like to speculate, argue, and debate—sometimes in ways that traditional journalists may think is unseemly. That’s okay, as long as our readers keep coming back for more.

Because what is a blog? It is a conversation with readers. And you don’t have to start a conversation knowing all the facts. But it helps if you end up with more than you start out with, and if you turn out to be right more often than wrong. Otherwise, people will stop listening to you—the same as they would with any media source.

(Hubble Telescope photo of colliding galaxies via Oswaldo).

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We highly recommend that you click on every one of these links and buy whatever excellent service they are providing (yeah, they pay us to say that):

Brightcove, Internet TV and video platform

Rackspace, hosting services

WildApricot, membership and community management services

Text Links Ads, marketplace for text-based ads

PantherCDN, content delivery network

OneSite, social networking software

Ads-Click, text-based ads marketplace

oDesk, outsourced programmers, web designers and other talent

eBuddy, web-services meta instant messenger

MediaTemple, TechCrunch’s own hosting provider

Here’s a list of upcoming conferences hosted by TechCrunch sponsors:

O’Reilly Graphing Social Patterns, March 3-4, San Diego

OReilly ETech, March 3-6, San Diego

MySQL Conference and Expo, April 14-17, Santa Clara

Thanks again to our wonderful sponsors who keep the lights on at TechCrunch. We now offer multiple sponsorship packages, including participation on CrunchBase, CrunchGear and MobileCrunch as well as TechCrunch UK and TechCrunch France. Learn more here or contact us.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

There are basically two ways to get your job listings highlighted on TechCrunch: shell out $200 for a listing on CrunchBoard, or write a blog post talking about how you read TechCrunch in the bathroom. Either option is fine by us.

More than twenty new jobs have been posted to Crunchboard in the last week. Here are a few highlights:

Business Development Manager, MySpace
Ruby on Rails Software Engineer, JibJab
Market Research Manager, CNET
Senior Manager, TravelPod Labs, TripAdvisor
User Experience Manager / Producer, Cars.com
CTO, Unigo
Technical Writer with JavaScript experience, Placebase
Software Integration Engineer, GoMobo
Executive Producer, LeapFrog Enterprises

And TechCrunch is hiring too (luckily, we don’t have to pay for our own job listings):

Events Expert
Spring-Term College Interns (remote work)
CrunchBase Analyst
TechCrunch Research Analyst

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We’ve spoken with most of the top presidential candidates over the last few months to get their on record position on ten key technology issues (Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich). But we were never able to nail down time with Ron Paul, despite his strong support from the Internet in general.

Well, it’s never too late. Just two hours after we made our Tech President endorsements live on Fox News this morning, we were able to get some phone time with Dr. Paul as well. The podcast is up at TalkCrunch and embedded below, and we will have a transcript up shortly as well.

Dr. Paul said some very interesting things in the podcast. Among other things, he is softening his anti-net neutrality viewpoint (see here as an example). He’s now readily admiting that he’s willing to listen to both sides of the argument before making a final decision. Ditto on the 700MHz discussion.

More analysis after the transcript is finalized. We’ll post it here.

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Tags: ronpaul

We are nearing the end of our TechCrunch Tech President Primary that we rolled out last month. Next week we’ll announce the results from the primary, and also endorse the candidate from each party that has the most favorable overall policies on ten key technology issues.

We’ve had great blogger and mainstream press coverage (see video clips on the primaries site), including SF Chronicle coverage this week.

If you haven’t voted yet, review the candidates positions on the issues and place your vote.

We’ve talked directly with many of the leading candidates - Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich. Notably absent are Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul - we’re still hoping to record podcasts with them before the endorsements are made.

For additional information resources, check out Yahoo’s Election Dashboard, Political Base and TechPresident (unaffiliated with us).

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Thank you to everyone who attended the first Crunchies event last night to honor startups in categories ranging from “best business model” to “best time sink” (pictured right is Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic/Wordpress, showing off his award for Best CEO).

If you were not one of the 900+ people to attend the event live last night in San Francisco, you can watch a video of the entire event that Mogulus recorded here. People are still uploading photos, but you can see them on Flickr under the tag “2007crunchies.”

Congratulations to all of the winners, as well as all of the nominees. It is my honor to have covered most of them since they’ve launched, and to see how well they’ve done is awesome.

And thank you to our co-producers, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat. Having this be a multi-blog event was an important step, and shows how blogs can compete hard for stories and still come together to collaborate when it is good for the community.

Media Coverage

Lots of blog coverage continues to roll in. Mainstream media was also all over the event. Alice radio, which hosts the no. 1 local morning show, kicked things off with two on air mentions. ABC and Fox covered the show locally and ABC also covered it nationally during the 11 pm news (see video clips above). NBC also covered the event - we’re uploading clips now.

Highlights

The highlight of the event for me was the best gadget category. John Biggs from CrunchGear recorded an overview video that was a crowd pleaser (see video below).

Apple won the award for the iPhone. But we simply could not get anyone from Apple to attend and accept the award. Fake Steve Jobs stepped in and recorded a video accepting for them. I’ve seen the video at least a dozen times now, and laugh harder every time I watch it:

The live performance by the Richter Scales of their Here Comes Another Bubble song was another highlight. I wish we could have ended with them, but their schedule forced them to go very early in the show:

Thank You

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Founders Fund, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Framr (an ecommerce start-up offering custom picture framing, launching tonight), Lotus Vodka, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, Searchles, our official live streaming partner of the night Mogulus, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

And thanks as well to everyone who worked hard on the event from the participating blogs. In particular, Heather Harde, our CEO, put in a heroic effort to get everything in place moments before the event began, and the teams from all four blogs really pitched with multiple all-nighters the last couple of days in to make the night go well. Special thanks to video blogger Sarah Meyers for giving us three straight days of her time to work through all of the video work for the event.

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The Crunchies Awards kick off at 7:30 pm PST at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. The event is over sold at this point, but if you want to attend virtually, you can. Event sponsor Mogulus is live streaming it. It’s should be live from aroound 6:30pm PST - you can watch the prep occur on stage by clicking above. For a full live streaming player with chat outside the player window go here.

If you are attending, please make sure you are here no later than 7 pm. More details are here. Please tag any photos you take of the event “2007crunchies.”

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Founders Fund, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Framr (an ecommerce start-up offering custom picture framing, launching tonight), Lotus Vodka, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, Searchles, our official live streaming partner of the night Mogulus, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Also tune into TechCrunch after the show around 9 pm for the full list of winners and some highlights from the night.

For a full live streaming player with chat outside the player window go here.

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Most of the team will be in San Francisco today preparing for the Crunchies at 7:30 pm. We’ll have light news coverage and a couple of updates throughout the day around the ceremony and party afterwards (we’re still trying to fit yet more people in based on the fire codes - we’re adding tickets to inventory here as we can) and we’ll likely give away a free pair of tickets in the early afternoon.

We have a lot of surprised in store…and yes, we are almost certainly going to be able to live stream the event on the participating blogs (VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb and GigaOm).

Stay tuned…

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