Mike Arrington presumably wanted to reduce Jason Calacanis' stake because most of the revenue was coming from TC50 and AOL didn't want to buy them with Calacanis getting half the revenue. So Arrington, acting in his own self-interest as one would expect, sacrificed his business relationship with Calacanis in order to make TechCrunch more attractive for an acquirer. These diverging interests led to their fallout and understandably made Calacanis irate. Though, I suspect that Calacanis would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed.
I don't know much about this stuff, but the 'sacrifice business relationship with Calacanis', is that the only loss Arrington had? Seems like a tiny thing to lose. Leaving Arrington's persona out, Calacanis is a major douche from what I've seen so really it doesn't seem like Arrington lost anything from switching to Disrupt.
Mike Arrington presumably wanted to reduce Jason Calacanis' stake because most of the revenue was coming from TC50 and AOL didn't want to buy them with Calacanis getting half the revenue. So Arrington, acting in his own self-interest as one would expect, sacrificed his business relationship with Calacanis in order to make TechCrunch more attractive for an acquirer. These diverging interests led to their fallout and understandably made Calacanis irate. Though, I suspect that Calacanis would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed.