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TechCrunch blog founder Michael Arrington is respected (okay, tolerated) for his fairness and openness in covering Internet startups. He wouldn't dare promote an evil company — that's why he called out a spammy startup called Jigsaw.

Michael may be against spam on principle, but hey, a blogger's gotta pay the bills. So he had no problem taking sponsorship from Text Link Ads, a company that violates Google's terms of service by selling links for higher search ranks.

Michael may be in bed with link spammers, but it's purely business, not editorial. No scandal here. So why did Michael close comments on his sponsor thank-you post? Don't be ashamed, man — keep comments open so everyone can thank you for separating your journalistic integrity from your advertising greed.

Thank you, TechCrunch sponsors [TechCrunch]
Buy text links ads [Text-link-ads.com]