Rich Fiscus
12 Sep 2011 14:01
The power struggle between Michael Arrington and Ariana Huffington over control of the TechCrunch blog has ended with Arrington leaving to concentrate on his new venture fund.
According to a statement from AOL, "Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund."
Editorial control of TechCrunch was wrested from Arrington earlier this month by Huffington, who runs The Huffington Post. Both content providers were purchased last year by AOL.
At issue was the venture fund mentioned in AOL's statement.
Arrington fought back, citing an earlier promise of editorial control. He demanded AOL either return control to him or sell TechCrunch back to its original investors. He threatened to discontinue his association with the website.
They apparently decided his presence wouldn't be required.
Today they named Erick Schonfeld, who has been with the blog since 2007, as Arrington's replacement. They also indicated more editorial changes would be coming in the next few months.