The Way I Work: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

TechCrunch, a San Francisco-based company that publishes the influential blog of the same name, started as a hobby. In 2005, Michael Arrington, a serial entrepreneur and former lawyer, was researching Silicon Valley start-ups and decided to post his findings online. Since then, TechCrunch, which draws about 9.2 million visitors a month and boasts annual revenue of about $10 million, has become the go-to source for breaking news about Internet start-ups and tech companies. Although TechCrunch has 25 full-time employees, Arrington, 40, still spends much of his time reporting and writing. On most days, he works remotely from his home near Seattle, in a cavelike home office. From morning until night, Arrington sits in darkness in front of his computer—blasting music, working his contacts, and focusing on what he loves best: breaking big stories.

I wake up in a pissed-off mood. I'm not a morning person. And I usually wake up to emergencies—an e-mail or a text message saying, 'Oh, my God! Something big is happening! How could you not have written about this yet?'

If news is breaking, I want to be on it. We break more big stories than everyone else combined in tech—and that's not prebriefed news or something that was handed to us. I judge my own performance based on that. When we break a story, that's a point. When someone else breaks a story, we're minus a point. And I want to be positive points.

I try to get up at 9 a.m. every day. One of the things my doctor wants me to do is regulate my sleep. A year ago, I'd work until I passed out, and wake up eight or nine hours later, which might be 4 p.m. or 3 a.m. Then I'd work again until I passed out. That was my life for four years—it got really bad. I missed a lot of social things. I didn't keep up with friends. I was a mess. I actually gained 50 pounds in the five years since I started TechCrunch. So now I'm working with a doctor and trying to get reset. Getting up at the same time every day is apparently one of the best things you can do health-wise. The problem is, I still don't go to sleep very early. So I'm usually working on four or five hours of sleep. Then I make it up on the weekends.

The very first thing I do in the morning is go right to my computer, which is always on. I'll scan my e-mail for breaking news. If something big is going on, I'll decide if I want to cover the story or assign it to another writer. Say a source sends me a tip that Google is buying Microsoft, and it's going to break later today—I'm making this up, but that would be a big story. I'd start calling people at Google and Microsoft to see if it's true or not.

Sometimes, it will be true, but the company will ask me to hold off. Negotiating with companies over how news breaks is a big part of what we do. I don't think traditional journalists would do this or admit to it, but a source might say, 'Yeah, we just got bought, but can you please not write about it for a week, because it might kill the deal?' Unless I know lots of other journalists are sniffing around, I generally defer to the entrepreneur. We probably lose half of those stories, but it's the right thing to do. It builds trust. People aren't going to tell you things if they don't trust you.

Usually around 11 a.m., after I have put out all the fires and there's nothing left in my inbox that I have to address immediately, I'll take a shower, get dressed, and walk my dogs. I have a chocolate and a yellow lab, and they're my best friends.

I moved to the Seattle area in May. It's calm, and my parents live nearby, so I see them a few times each week. I spend two-thirds of the time working here, and the rest of the time in our office in San Francisco. Right now, I don't actually have a place in California, so I stay in hotels.

After my dogs are fed, I make myself something to eat and go back to my desk. My office is like a cave. I have blackout shades on the windows. I like the dark. There's less distraction. I use a Mac with two 24-inch monitors, and I'll do research on one screen and write on the other. It's more efficient. I'd love to have three monitors, but Macs support only two. I have the exact same setup in my office in San Francisco.

I usually spend about half my day talking to sources, either on the phone or on IM. There are very few people in Silicon Valley—or in tech, in general—whom I don't know pretty well. Chasing down stories is my favorite part of my job. My style is to bust the door down and clean the mess up later. That works pretty well for me. I've known a lot of my sources for five years now. When I call them, there's no salutation—it's just right to the point. I expect them to tell me what I want to know very quickly.

Our main competitive advantage is that my team and I truly love entrepreneurs. They're my rock stars. I've always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. I had four businesses that did not work out. TechCrunch is my first real success, and it happened by accident. If I were to write a book, it would be about what drives entrepreneurs. I meet the winners, and the losers, too. Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. The losers are actually more interesting sometimes. You learn a ton from failure.

I never develop friendships with people I don't actually like. For instance, I write about digital music a lot. And the music labels are notorious for working the press. They'll leak stuff and develop relationships, and it can actually be pretty fruitful as a journalist to get to know them. I hate 'em. They sue their customers. I see them as Darth Vader. Maybe it's not fair, but I see the world in black and white. I don't like them, so I won't talk to them. My sources are all people I actually genuinely like, and I think they know that. They're my friends, too.

I'm pretty unorganized when it comes to keeping track of my sources. I used to keep most of them sorted in my head. But then at some point in the past year, I suddenly lost my short-term memory. I don't know if it's just turning 40. One way I stay organized now is by using Google Voice. It keeps a record of all of my phone calls and text messages. When I make a call, I'll almost always initiate it from my computer through this service. And if somebody calls my Google Voice number, it will ring my cell phone or my home phone—any phone I want. It also makes it easy to set up cell phones when I travel to Europe or Asia.