TechCrunch Cutbacks, Explained Again

We were skeptical of CrunchGear editor John Biggs' explanations for cutbacks at his gadget blog: He told Valleywag that writers are "on hiatus" while the company ramped up its sales staff.

But CNET's Caroline McCarthy is more trusting. Also, she actually spoke to a CrunchGear source -- presumably not Biggs -- who repeated the same argument this morning.

"There are adjustments," the source said, adding that CrunchGear "decided to scale things back to a more core staff" and that "some writers were put on hold and some were let go as part of standard site growth."

If that's standard site growth, then we are very worried. But we still don't buy the argument -- or Caroline's hypothesis, which is that there is some sort of miscommunication here that stems from a raucous party thrown by Tivo and RealNetworks last night. We were at the same party, and though it was very nice -- Fountains of Wayne played a few songs, guests got a glow-in-the-dark Tivo remote as a parting gift -- we missed the drunken debauchery part. Perhaps we need to stay later next time. CNET

Also see: TechCrunch Slashing Jobs?  Maybe not worth $100 Million