AOL wants to buy TechCrunch at a 70 percent discount to Arrington's nine-figure price tag

Time Warner's AOL and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington have been talking for the past two months, with AOL offering Arrington $20 million to $30 million to acquire tech's most dutiful clearinghouse for startup PR. Kara Swisher says that TechCrunch wants more than $30 million; we've heard he's looking for more like $100 million. Arrington has perpetually shopped his site around; all this deal talk reminds us how, just the other weekend, we overhead him wishing he could just sell out and move to Hawaii. Which makes for a nice pipe dream, but a weak negotiating position. Another reason to be skeptical: This is not Arrington's first flirtation with Time Warner. More »

TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld to unleash world's worst startup pitches on the rest of us

When we worked together at Business 2.0, I always thought my then-colleague Erick Schonfeld was a bit of an evil genius. Now an editor at TechCrunch, Schonfeld hasn't proven me wrong. He's taking all of the boring startup spiels — "elevator pitches" — he gets from wantrepreneurs trooping through his office and turning them into content. All he has to do is sit back and hit "Record"; he doesn't actually have to do the critical thinking required to evaluate whether the ideas hold any promise, or even make sense. How boring is this idea? Look at David Carr from the New York Times, sitting two seats over from Schonfeld, who's fallen asleep just from listening to the idea. But I have no doubt this is the crowdsourced, video-enabled future of innovation journalism, folks.

"Joost's greatest asset right now is not it's peer-to-peer technology. It's the momentum its gained so far by being an early mover." — TechCrunch trophy hire Erick Schonfeld demonstrates the value of the old-media copy editors he left behind at Time Inc. [TechCrunch]

"Erick, where do you get these revelations from? IPO? Just because a still money losing pure content company gets a new CEO? Thanks for bringing this great analytical mind to bear on TechCrunch." A commenter to new TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld on his post about an IPO for political blog network Huffington Post. [TechCrunch]

TechCrunch and Business 2.0 never managed to merge, but editor Michael Arrington has snapped up former B2 editor-at-large Erick Schonfeld. (This explains why Schonfeld recently revived his dormant blog to cover the TechCrunch40 conference.) Opinionated, arrogant, and whip-smart, Schonfeld is the perfect match for Arrington. We're looking forward to the fireworks at TechCrunch edit meetings — to which Schonfeld will be dialing in remotely from Brooklyn. [Bits]