The new sport of Bloxing

Bloxing is the emerging Sport 2.0, when two media-heads throw a Usenet style hissy fit in blogland and start boxing each other's digital ears. Today we witness a world heavyweight bout between TechCrunch in the Red Corner and Wired in the Blue. You join us as Round 5 begins, the story so far is:

Round One - Wired Magazine’s Betsy Schiffman wrote about the TechCrunch/Washington Post mashup

“We’ve got nothing against TechCrunch, but it seems crazy-crazy to us that the Washington Post, a paper known for the sort of reporting that can take down U.S. presidents, is publishing content written by a dude who invests in the companies he writes about. But what do we know.”

Round Two: TechCrunch returned a “WTF?” (with an emphasis on the “F”) block, arguing that MA all discloses all relationships, after imbibing too long from the sponge:

I responded to the article as succinctly as possible here (written after a night of heavy drinking at the Time 100 party) and then followed up with additional Twitter messages suggesting we hold a Wired burning party.

Round 3: Schiffman makes a jab to the TC soft underbelly - its Post partner's reputation- and writes a follow up article over here, asserting that

"The one thing that newspapers still have over new online outlets is the brand, the name and the standards. They've told readers that by the mere presence of a story on the Washington Post, that it's been through a rigorous analysis or edit and it is up to their standards. The assumption is that unless you hear otherwise, the content you see in the Post has gone through that ethical screening.".

Round 4: Techcrunch parries with a write hook, over here and swings in with:

....as far as I’m concerned Wired.com, from Editor-In-Chief Evan Hansen on down to Betsy Schiffman, has clearly crossed an ethical line here. Perhaps they are giving up the fight to write relevant content and are resorting to sensationalist trash like this to generate page views.

So far we shade it to Wired on points, but lets not underrate the TC tag team

What is being thrashed out here is fairly serious, albeit in this entertaining and visual new medium - it's the new interplay between the ethics of trust and the pragmatism of finance in an always on, free-to-user, offset economy media world. I'm sure this won't be the last round, or the last match in this fascinating sport.