A astro-physics friend of mine once said that when companies with large balance sheets begin that spiral into becoming a black hole or neutron star, you can tell the process has begun because it creates a jet of high-energy engineers moving away and at right angles. :-)
After the whole Arrington drama I think it would do Techcrunch a lot of good to stop talking about internal AOL politics for a while. Reading articles like this doesn't help their credibility in my eyes, and I'd be very surprised if it actually helped their credibility with anyone at all.