Oh, very rarely?

Remind me to try using that one if ever I have to explain to a a company that I break my contracts 'very rarely' or my wife that I am unfaithful 'very rarely, or a court that I drive while drunk very rarely.

You do it. You cannot be trusted not to do it.

So fucking what? "Its OK if they do it too" is not journalism, its sleaze. I've heard people claim Techcrunch to be a rag, now I agree.

Moreover, I was a tech journalist for 15 years and we didn't do it. We would argue very hard about them, but an agreement was an agreement.

Since you've already admitted you can't be trusted, I see no reason to believe such a slur on your competitors. Not that it would be right even if it were true.

I don't really understand the thinking behind this one?

"Do we refuse to cover some startups when they don’t want to give a story to us exclusively? Sometimes."

Surely if a startup is worth covering, they're worth covering regardless of the the competition?

To me this is the crux of ArticStartup's post, and I really don't understand why Techcrunch would say to a startup "If you speak to Mashable (or whoever) forget about coverage from us".

That's not really what I meant. We sift through hundreds of pitches every day, and only some are interesting. Of those, we'll go with the one that agrees to an exclusive, given a choice, it's that simple.

And again, nothing prevents us from covering startups later.