I'm all for that, and also for owning up completely as to how often this happened.
TC yanking the content to avoid tainting is one thing but it would be good to know what the extent of this is.
Another thing that bothers me about this is that I can't see how a 17 year old given the keys to the kingdom would come up with such a scheme, that's hardly the first thing that crosses your mind when you start your career.
If the first instance of this was initiated by the company written about then that would change my whole idea about this.
See, I have a different view on this. I am not faulting the intern at all, it is really the company that wanted the write-up. If you are going to bribe someone at TechCrunch, who do you contact: Mike A. or an intern?
I think the intern's response was a good start to what is going to be some time before his reputation is back to normal, but I think we need to see who this company was and blame fault there.
Edit: http://twitter.com/loic/status/8666998987 - Loic gave some good advice, I can't get ahold of him but hopefully he'll take it.