Generally, ethics guidelines at reputable publication (and with AOL, the "reputable" part probably deserves airquotes) will prohibit editors and reporters from having personal investments in the companies they write about, to prevent conflicts of interest or at least the appearance of such conflicts. For reporters that cover a sector, this generally extends to all companies within that industry (I used to be a technology reporter.)
Arrington wanted to both:
1. run an influential tech publication covering early stage companies
2. run a fund that invests in early stage companies and have compensation tied to the performance of that fund (if not his own money invested as well.)
Those two are generally considered mutually exclusive as far as a media organization is concerned. If someone at AOL didn't see that conflict when adding him to their fund effort, they're dumb. If Mike didn't see that issue, he's dumb too or just thinks everyone else is dumb.
Clearly AOL at least has some minimum threshold of integrity they're trying to maintain. I don't think there's much blame you can assign to Huffington on this unless you can find another major editor who would allow that kind of a conflict.
Arrington wanted to both:
1. run an influential tech publication covering early stage companies
2. run a fund that invests in early stage companies and have compensation tied to the performance of that fund (if not his own money invested as well.)
Those two are generally considered mutually exclusive as far as a media organization is concerned. If someone at AOL didn't see that conflict when adding him to their fund effort, they're dumb. If Mike didn't see that issue, he's dumb too or just thinks everyone else is dumb.
Clearly AOL at least has some minimum threshold of integrity they're trying to maintain. I don't think there's much blame you can assign to Huffington on this unless you can find another major editor who would allow that kind of a conflict.