New TechCrunch editor Eric Eldon, in 2010* (Disclaimer: New York Observer News Editor Megan McCarthy was neighbors with Mr. Eldon from 2006 to 2008)

Damn, we thought for sure the next big exit from the ashes of the house that Arrington built was going to be Alexia Tsotsis, but it looks like heads are rolling closer to the top instead. Editor-in-chief Erick Schonfeld, the "man without hap" that many doubted could match Mike Arrington's bluster swagger, is out as editor-in-chief of TechCrunch.

In aberration from the typical TechCrunch good-bye post, which is becoming something of a genre, Mr. Schonfeld didn't pen his own farewell. Rather it was written, mere minutes ago, by Ms. Tsotsis and her new boss, Eric Eldon. Mr. Eldon is a former editor at VentureBeat and, unlike Mr. Schonfeld's promotion, it looks like ex-Crunchers approve.

On PandoDaily, MG Siegeler writes:

"The truth is that this is the perfect position for Eldon. From the Stanford Daily to Y Combinator to VentureBeat to Inside Network to now TechCrunch, he has pretty much all the aspects of Silicon Valley flowing through his veins. He has been a writer, an editor, and a two-time startup founder."

On the phone with Betabeat, Mr. Eldon, who joined TechCrunch last November, said, "I've been reading TechCrunch since 2005. Most of the time I've been competing against it. Now I get to do something that I would have never imagined then — built it up."

His introductory post offered a pointed description of what readers can expect from the new regime:

"We’re going to put our heads down and focus on the basics.

We’re going to continue building our team in Silicon Valley, hitting the mean streets of Silicon Valley to report on the entrepreneurs, investors, world-class tech companies, and everyone else that makes this ecosystem what it is.

You know, the stories that made TechCrunch your homepage back in 2005 when it was a personal blog written by Michael Arrington." [Emphasis ours.]

We take it that means they'll stop linking to other blogs that break tech news before them and demand 'exclusives or else'?

Along with the renewed editorial swagger, Mr. Eldon promised a more globally-minded expansion. "But it’s 2012 and the whole world is embracing tech entrepreneurship, so we’ll also grow our staff in other key cities in the US and around the world, too."

As evidenced by the hurried post, however, the upset at the top was abrupt. "Things can change very quickly in the world of blogging, and Erick decided now is the best time for him to leave," wrote Mr. Eldon. Rumor has it that that decision may have been made for him, but for now, everyone's playing nice:

TechCrunch is in good hands. I'm very proud of the team I've built there techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/goo…

— Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld) February 27, 2012

In the meantime, hide your bloggers, hide your wives:

and they'll ruin more. "@anthonyha: Man, @eldon's tech blogger recruiting skill have ruined so many lives @JoshConstine @parislemon" — Eric Rosser Eldon (@eldon) February 27, 2012

Check out Betabeat's profile, "Can Erick Schonfeld Keep the TechCrunch Swagger Alive?"

(flickr.com/epsos)

Here at Betabeat, we're inundated with calls and emails from publicists who work for startups and founders who don't have publicists. Most of the calls are cold, obviously part of a mass outreach effort, and frequently come from companies Betabeat wouldn't cover, usually because they're not based in New York. Often times the calls are invitations to events we aren't interested in, like a talk about digital media that takes place in the middle of the day. Frequently the emails bear subject lines like, "New Online Trend" or "Tubalr, a new way of surfing YouTube and enjoying music" or "New app helps 'break the ice' at holiday gatherings" or "Localscope on sale for 5 days."

Anyway, we know what TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld means when he says "the sheer number of new startups forming and getting funded these days is dizzying." No doubt TechCrunch gets vastly more pitches from new companies than we do. But the sheer volume of come-ons from new startups in New York and beyond is staggering, and that's what has Mr. Schonfeld comparing this period in startup history to the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid evolution and diversification of life forms that occurred about 530 million years ago.

Many new life forms were created, Mr. Schonfeld writes, but many were naturally selected out. And with seed stage fundings outpacing series A fundings, a swatch of new startups is on notice. Survival of the fittest. "A lot of seed stage startups are going to die," said Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, at the Bloomberg Empowered Entrepreneur conference earlier this month. "An enormous amount were funded over the last two years, and the money is not there now to support them in the next round."

Of course, there are still plenty of companies having no trouble raising a Series A. But here in New York, we've seen companies like ToVieFor struggle to raise funds after blasting out of the gate into TechStars and winning the Stern Business School business plan competition at NYU. Flash sales aggregator MyNines shut down in August; early Facebooker Chris Hughes had to shutter Jumo around the same time after the service floundered, and the myriad group texters are starting to drop out of the race. Dinevore, which never got funded, is mid-pivot, as is Leetto. Meanwhile, the hype continues elsewhere: PublicStuff had an oversubscribed round and investors are still throwing money at Tumblr.

Only time will tell which companies are fit enough to survive. But with the low barriers to entry in Startupland, the losses are fairly minimal--it's not like the IPO-happy days of the dot-com era when any sign of traction meant entrepreneurs started counting down the minutes to a public offering. We're talking about angels and VCs losing money in the low five digits, for the most part (although Lee Hnetinka lost $100,000 on his app), which is why the mania persists: not much to lose, potentially the next Facebook to gain.

Image via Flickr user jdlasica

For the last decade, Erick Schonfeld has been the lone wolf of tech media, working as the East Coast point man for tech publications headquartered in Silicon Valley “He’s the kind of reporter who can handle anything you throw at him, from a trendy Web 2.0 startup to a Fortune 100 titan,” said Josh Quittner, who was Mr. Schonfeld’s old boss at Business 2.0. “For us he played the one man band.”

The thirty-nine-year-old father of three lives in the suburbs near Chappaqua, forty five minutes north of New York City. (He left a tip on Foursquare about his morning commute from the Metro North station: “Get here early and snag a metered parking spot.”)

At public events he tends to wear slightly oversized suits in tan or grey, frameless glasses and a thick head of dark curls. “He’s a very sober person, even keel, not easily upset,” said Mr. Quittner. “When I started we had a number of people working for us on the East Coast, but by the end it was just Erick.”

Two weeks ago, Mr. Schonfeld, never a shrinking violet, took a big step into the spotlight. He had been, for the last four years, the co-editor of TechCrunch, a level headed counterpart to Mike Arrington, the pugilistic provocateur who founded the site as a personal blog. But the last year has been an eventful one for TechCrunch. Mr. Arrington sold the site to AOL a year ago, after which AOL merged with the Huffington Post, setting up an inevitable clash between two of the biggest egos in media: Mr. Arrington and Arianna Huffington. After Mr. Arrington announced he'd formed his own tech fund and would be investing in some of the same companies TechCrunch covered, he was forced out in a dramatic shake-up. That's when the mild-mannered editor was asked to step in for one of the media’s biggest bomb throwers. He accepted the position, and immediately found his old partners leveling their formidable rhetorical firepower at him.

“The truth is, Erick was Arianna Huffington’s choice, not TechCrunch’s,” wrote Arrington acolyte Paul Carr, in a resignation post that he published on TechCrunch (where else?) as Mr. Schonfeld was boarding a plane. Mr. Arrington followed up a few days later on his new blog, Uncrunched, noting, “Public executions of leaders tend to have a severe chilling effect on whoever takes over, and Arianna Huffington is, without a doubt, the current editor in chief of TechCrunch.”

With his influential ex-partner publicly undermining his authority, many wondered if Mr. Schonfeld could keep the site together. Prominent tech investor Fred Wilson had already written on his blog, “TechCrunch is a big question mark. If AOL can keep the rest of the team together, then TechCrunch has a bright future.” The key, wrote Mr. Wilson, was that Techrunch “Has a voice, a swagger, a 'fuck you' attitude that comes from Mike. That can also live on without Mike if AOL allows it. They need to keep the remaining team, the voice, and that attitude if they want to remain at the top of the world of tech media.”

That may be Mr. Schonfeld's biggest challenge for the moment. The two remaining writers best known for their swagger are Sarah Lacy and MG Siegler.

Ms. Lacy is on a fourth-month maternity leave. And late Monday night, Mr. Arrington announced that MG Siegler would be coming to work for him as a venture capitalist at his new Crunchfund, though he would continue to pen a TechCrunch column on Apple.

A weary Mr. Schonfeld phoned Betabeat, shortly after the news about Mr. Siegler broke. “Obviously, MG was a great asset to us, and I would have loved to keep him on as a writer,” said Mr. Schonfeld. “But I'm glad I found a way to keep his voice on the site.”

Mr. Schonfeld noted that this move into venture capital was long in the works, a notion Mr. Siegler seconded in a blog post. But the timing, so soon after Mr. Arrington’s departure, did not look good. “It doesn't really matter how it looks, it matters how I perform,” said Mr. Schonfeld. “I'll stand by that, over the time to come.”

Despite being viewed by some as the Robin to Mr. Arrington's Batman, in fact Mr. Schonfeld has a formidable resume of his own. After graduating from Cornell in 1993, Mr. Schonfeld went right to work as a journalist at Fortune. In 1996 and again in 1997, Schonfeld was recognized as one of the “brightest financial journalists under the age of 30” by the TJFR Business News Reporter. In 1999, he won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards. In the lead up to the dot-com bust he moved to Business 2.0 and when that company went under a few years later, he took a coveted spot as co-editor at TechCrunch.

When Mr. Schonfeld began working at TechCrunch in 2007 it was still largely the personal blog of Mr. Arrington. In the five year’s since, the site has become the news outlet of record for the tech industry. Startups compete to break their company’s news on TechCrunch, both as a status symbol and because coverage there brings young companies so many new users. The site’s conference, Disrupt, is a sell-out affair, with execs from Google, Facebook and Twitter taking the stage to trade inside jokes with Mr. Arrington.

Mr. Schonfeld’s opportunity is vast. TechCrunch is bigger and more profitable than ever. Its recent acquisition by AOL means it has a fatter bankroll and a much larger audience network. Still, there's a big obstacle: Mr. Arrington seems intent on burning the fields behind his departing forces, even going so far as to write his own epitaph, evoking the spirit of Louis XIV: “I am TechCrunch and TechCrunch is me.” Given that he's the site's founding editor and most recognized writer, that has been true till now. It’s up to Mr. Schonfeld to rewrite that formula.

“I’ve been recruiting for the last three weeks straight,” Mr. Schonfeld told Betabeat. “To pretend that everything will go on as before is foolish. But the team will grow and, best of all, the top writers in the industry all want to work for us.”

For some, Mr. Schonfeld comes across as the consummate company man. “When Mike sold TechCrunch to AOL, a lot of the writers were very unhappy,” said one former staffer. AOL was about as far from the scrappy, irreverent brand TechCrunch had built as possible, and what had been an intimate business was now going to become part of a notoriously corporate behemoth. “Erick was the opposite of most people. He seemed to relish going to those AOL management meetings.”

No one Betabeat spoke to for this article doubted Mr. Schonfeld’s talent’s as a journalist. But several of the site's writers, past and present, worried that Mr. Schonfeld didn’t have the edge necessary to cultivate a new class of TechCrunch writers who would maintain the site's trademark swagger. “Mike can make you feel like a million bucks, and he can also tear you apart with a few words,” said a former staffer. “Erick was good at patching things up after Mike lashed out.”

Up until now, Mr. Schonfeld’s calm persona had been an asset at TechCrunch. It was a classic good cop, bad cop partnership, with Mr. Arrington lighting the fires and Mr. Schonfeld, along with CEO Heather Harde, making sure the trains ran on time.

But Mr. Arrington’s wrath was also the site’s most powerful tool. He used it to motivate his writers and to inculcate their work with a combative tone that became the site’s trademark.

Mr. Schonfeld threw a few punches of his own last week, slamming rival publication VentureBeat for writing a hackneyed attack on TechCrunch. VentureBeat quickly retracted their story and then apologized. Asked if he felt the need to get more aggressive, to put his own stamp on TechCrunch and to reclaim it from Mr. Arrington, Mr. Schonfeld demurred. “It’s not like I’m new here," he said. "There will be more continuity than difference and I don't see a need to sever the connection to Mike. I am not going to change the editorial approach, which was to be smarter and to be first.”

But Mr. Schonfeld did acknowledge that he needed, in some very big ways, to fill the void left by TechCrunch’s departed founder. “I have a lower profile than Mike, it’s a different style.I try not to draw attention to myself, because I prefer to let my stories speak for themselves. But yes, I realize I am the face of the company now. I don’t have to do things the way he did, but yes, I have to come out and be more, be in public."

Nonetheless, he added firmly, "I’m going to do it my way.”

*Refresh, refresh, refresh.*

Those of you who hopped on a plane without Wifi Friday evening can be forgiven for not keeping track of what AllThingsD's Kara Swisher described as "pure twaddle wrapped in ridonkulous grandstanding." First came TechCrunch writer Paul Carr's lively public resignation letter. That was followed by newly-crowned TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld's equally public resignation acceptance. And then, to pile it on, TechCrunch writer MG Siegeler offered a semi-private anti-Huffington IED because hey, it's no fun if you can't play too.

Digg's Kevin Rose compared all the adolescent drama to "a LiveJournal page," so put on some emo jams and join us, won't you, as we flip through the pages of TechCrunch's Burn Book. And, yes, for the most part, you'll find it at the same URL where the professional tech blog used to be.

I BLAME ERICK

When Betabeat last left the "Housebabies of Silicon Valley"--nothing brings out Ms. Swisher's playful side more than a moving target, apparently--Mr. Carr had just j'accused! Mr. Schonfeld of cutting "a side deal with Huffington to guarantee him the top job once Mike was gone," rather than "making a stand for the site's editorial independence from The Huffington Post."

Considering the fact that Mr. Carr published his missive attacking Mr. Schonfeld, exposing internal power struggles, and potentially damaging the future of TechCrunch on TechCrunch, once again, we're baffled by how Mr. Carr defines "editorial independence," except as letting Michael Arrington get exactly what he wants all the time--in this case: picking his successor. "The irony is that had Erick stayed strong for just a few days, he’d would have been appointed interim editor anyway, with Mike’s blessing," writes Mr. Carr, before changing his tune a few paragraphs later, "The notion that a Silicon Valley blog should be run by a guy in New York is just ludicrous."

Unfortunately, Mr. Carr buries perhaps the most disturbing revelation:

Not three days after his appointment, Erick made his first ethics disclosure as TC’s new editor — insisting that Mike had played no part in the selection of TechCrunch Disrupt finalists. Bluntly put, that was not true — as Mike had to clarify in the comments…

“Erick… Please be careful making statements on my behalf. And remember that reader trust is what matters. You shouldn’t say “he was not involved in the final selection of these companies” just because it sounds nice. Since it isn’t true, you shouldn’t say it at all.”

One of these two men is your new ethical champion, Arianna. The other one is the guy you fired.

Considering the number of startups that hype "We came from TechCrunch Disrupt" as part of their origin myth, we fail to see how the guy that influenced a competition, but disclosed it gets crowned the ethical winner. Sorry folks, no champions of reader trust here.

Some viewers took umbrage at the high-minded Hunter S. Thompson epigraph that led Mr. Carr's post. On TechCrunch writer Robin Wauter's blog (yes, Mr. Wauters too dipped a toe into the morass, if only to shake off the slime) an anonymous commenter wrote under the name "r8ndom":

"Do readers actually pay attention to bylines? I see all these adjectives being thrown, like "phenomenal" and "amazing", like it was Ernest freaking Hemingway writing, but to me all articles look the same - a paragraph on some company, couple of paragraphs on what they do, obligatory screenshot, and a wrap-up clarifying who the investor is and where the founders came from."

Betabeat begs to differ in this instance. Consider, if you will, Mr. Carr's jaunty usage of the word "hap" to skewer Mr. Schonfeld:

"He’s just — what’s the word? — hapless. He is a man utterly devoid of ‘hap’. Hating him for being expertly played by Arianna Huffington is like hating a baby for crying on a long-haul flight. He doesn’t understand why people are mad at him, he just wants to be fed."

I BLAME PAUL

It may strike some as odd that Mr. Schonfeld felt obligated to publish his acceptance of Mr. Carr's resignation letter on TechCrunch. But let's remember, people, this is a company where an employee that has been fired threatened to quit by sending a ransom letter, so it's probably crucial to make someone's employment status clear.

Mr. Schonfeld dismissed Mr. Carr's allegations as the delusional ramblings of a wandering freelancer and claimed himself champion on "editorial independence":

"Paul’s resignation post reads like the brave stand of a man of principle. But the truth is that Paul doesn’t really know what he is talking about. And he certainly doesn’t speak for TechCrunch. He is not even a full-time employee. I tried to reach out to him and was hoping to have an honest conversation about his future (or lack thereof) at TechCrunch. Instead, he blindsided me with his post by publishing it as I was boarding a plane."

Then he explained his decision not to take down Mr. Carr's post:

At any other publication, Paul would have been fired long ago. And his post would be taken down. But I will let it stand. When Paul was hired, he was promised that he could write anything and it would not be censored, even if it was disparaging to TechCrunch. I will still honor that agreement. Paul likes to groan a lot about TechCrunch’s supposed loss of editorial independence. Yet he cannot point to one instance where he was blocked from saying what he believes on TechCrunch, and I am not going to start to do that now.

Somehow, this made TechCrunch commenters very angry as they imagined how Saint Arrington would have done it differently. Sadly, Mr. Schonfeld lost the high road by calling Mr. Carr a "misinformed coward" on Twitter for posting while he was about to board a plane. But no one paid attention to the "coward" part for long as the whole discussion devolved into the strength of Mr. Schonfeld's Wifi signal considering he tweeted aboard the same flight.

As TechCrunch top commenter Charlie Joslin wrote, "I assume these people have each other's emails and phone numbers so this could be easily solved that way." One would think, Charlie, one would think.

I BLAME ARIANNA

It was Saturday by the time MG Siegler decided to pile on. Mr. Siegler titled the post on his Tumblr "What Needs to be Said." On Twitter, Ms. Swisher edited the headline to, "What Needs to Be Said if You're the Emperor of Me-Me-And-Also-Me!" Adding, "FYI, Rupe doesn't call us much, cuz we're adults" in response to Mr. Siegler's nagging curiosity over why AOL hasn't contacted him personally about the matter.

"Also the truth: AOL has not reached out to me once in this entire situation. You’d think they might care about something like that. Evidently, they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it, but it’s curious."

"Obviously not, right? I mean obviously he hasn’t given it a second thought about why AOL hasn’t called him, which is why he’s writing about it," explained business writer Dan Lyons.

After giving his one-word verdicts on his colleague's version of events, "I found Paul’s post tactless. And I found Erick’s response inappropriate," Mr. Siegler unmasked the real enemy, pointing the j'accuse finger further up the food chain at Ms. Huffington:

"There is exactly one person to blame for all of this — and her name is not Erick."

Mr. Siegler also managed to reassure concerned readers about TechCrunch's future . . . by comparing it to banks with toxic assets:

"But TechCrunch is also too big to fail. One way or another, it will live on. Try as hard as AOL might, they can’t totally fuck it up. That’s just the truth."

I BLAME SHAKESPEARE

In a brilliant little takedown, Mr. Lyons wonders if these dudes haven't been watching too much Henry V:

"M.G. also reassures his readers that “no matter what happens,” he’ll be fine. Maybe so, but the worlds of technology and journalism will never be the same! How fitting it is for this band of courageous hacks to go out in a blaze of glory. Burn with fury, oh poets of the Valley! Rage against the dying of the light! Long after you are gone the world will remember that once — yes, once, in a different time — there lived men like you, brave giants who strode the earth with swagger and fuck-you attitude, who feared not the wrath of their corporate overlords, who turned defiant faces upward and bit — yes, bit, with sharpened teeth — the hand that fed them, who stood loyal beside their King and Leader and refused to break ranks when surrounded by the enemy, vowing instead to fight to their last breath.

This — yes, this! This glory, this wonder! This was Camelot! This, my friends, was TechCrunch."

Mr. Carr

Flabbergasts! New York-based TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, newly-named editor in chief of the site, has been accused. In a glorious resignation post, TechCrunch writer Paul Carr pointed a finger at the New Yorker: "While Heather, Mike and other senior editorial staffers were making a stand for the site’s editorial independence from The Huffington Post, Erick cut a side deal with Huffington to guarantee him the top job once Mike was gone."

This information came from Mr. Arrington "and was later corroborated by more than one other person close to the situation," Mr. Carr told Betabeat by email. "I don't really want to say much more than that."

Mr. Schonfeld appears to be on an airplane at the moment and did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Mr. Carr let loose the dirt on Mr. Schonfeld and AOL content overlord Arianna Huffington in his farewell post.

"The curious thing is that Erick knew everyone at TechCrunch supported him, at least for the interim role. And yet when Arianna called, he answered. Mike and I spoke at the time and he gave me his take on the deal: “at the point Erick began negotiating with Arianna instead of standing firm with the rest of us, he became nothing more that Arianna’s pet. All hope for independence with him at the lead became lost”. (Mike asked me to keep our conversations confidential until the situation was resolved.)"

...

"In this situation, though, I think [Ms. Huffington] screwed up badly by allowing her growing personal animosity towards Mike — and, let’s be clear, this fight was almost entirely personal — to rule her head, ejecting Mike completely from the company he founded and installing his polar opposite as a puppet editor."

...

"I really can’t over-emphasize how much Mike, as an editor, made writers feel like he had their back."

...

"Do I have another job already lined up? The answer is no. Once I hit 'publish', I’ll be without a regular writing gig for the first time in five years. This is both terrifying and exciting in equal measure. Sometimes you just have to hurl yourself off the cliff and see if anyone tries to catch you."

The new boss

AOL issued an official statement saying that Mike Arrington has decided to move on, leaving AOL to run his venture fund with a lot of AOL money. Erick Schonfeld, who has been the number two at TechCrunch for a while, will become the editor in chief.

Unless Schonfeld decides to relocate, that would move the head of TechCrunch's editorial staff to New York, where he was recently joined by SF transplant Jason Kincaid. Bad news for Betabeat, but we thrive on competition.

Here is the memo from AOL:

“The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future. Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund. Erick Schonfeld has been named the editor of TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be expanding its editorial leadership in the coming months.”

The whole Crunchfund drama seems pretty scripted now. As he did the year before with Angelgate, Mr. Arrington drew mainstream media attention to his conference, then bowed out with what he wanted, a venture fund and his head held high. Mr. Schonfeld will be a capable successor. Mr. Arrington, in a speech this morning, wore a shirt reading unpaid blogger, meaning he can easily continue to write or feed information to his former staffers.

And with that Mr. Arrington sits down to interview Reid Hoffman, who gets to guest post on TechCruch, invests with Mr. Arrington, and told Kara Swisher Greylock was investing in Crunchfund for the dealflow and coverage. Business as usual.