[itsprofitbaron]

Michael Arrington is a Limited Partner in SoftTech VC meaning that, he's an investor in the VC firm. He doesn't make the decisions on what they invest in that's down to their team who you can find at: http://softtechvc.com/team/. In otherwords a disclosure isn't necessary as he has no influence and/or potentially even knowledge on what SoftTech VC have invested in (some VC firms don't list all of their investments on their portfolio pages).

[shuzchen]

Yes but in this case, they (TC) know that Arrington is a partner at SoftTech VC, and they also know that SoftTech VC is investing in this particular startup being covered (They mention them specifically in the article) so the ignorance argument is invalid.

Since someone within TC stands to profit from the company they are writing about, isn't a disclosure a good idea? I agree that it's not entirely clear-cut what to do here, but IMO to build any sort of journalistic integrity a media outlet should err on the side of disclosure.

[itsprofitbaron]

TechCrunch generally disclose when Crunchfund invest (albeit they didn't do so effectively with Orchestra/Mailbox). Having said that I don't feel that they need to disclose that a former founder & now part-time Writer, has an investment in a VC firm - which he has no control over - and they have made an investment in a startup which, he may not even be aware about.

Micheal Arrington is an LP in a16z, Benchmark, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel as well as being a General Partner at Crunchfund[1]. I think the disclosure of Crunchfund is enough otherwise, on every post there will be a disclosure stating Michael Arrington has directly/indirectly invested in a startup they are covering with/without his own knowledge. Don't forget this is the same, Michael Arrington who stopped investing when he founded TechCrunch and the ones he had invested in - there was a clear disclosure and he never personally covered them.

[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/person/michael-arrington