[nikcub]

While I was at TC there was a hard and fast rule that if a story had already been reported on another tech blog that we wouldn't write it, even if one of the writers was 90% done on his or her version of the story.

The only time this didn't happen was when there was a pre-brief and an embargo, which we usually got a head start on anyway.

Arrington was strict on this rule and that was his editorial style. If you talk to any writer from that time period ('06-'10) they would each have a half-dozen stories to share of stories they had been working on being stopped because somebody else published the same story first. It didn't even need an instruction from editors, it was just understood.

(this isn't a comment on the 'new' Techcrunch, I actually like it, the rewrite content doesn't get in the way of good original content from being written, and it usually adds new information to a story).