TechCrunch has been taking heavy flack for publishing purloined Twitter documents, but the tech/business blog has a message for the haters: Don't worry, we're sitting on the most newsworthy documents. Um, what?

TechCrunch has issued its final post based on hacker-obtained Twitter documents; the post reveals internal Twitter strategy discussions, including talks about the company's relationships with celebrities and tech giants Google and Microsoft.

But there was plenty missing:

There are some details about partner discussions, particularly around
Google and Microsoft, that we are just not going to publish. Twitter
has been in negotiations with both companies around a broad set of
transactions for months. But we aren't going to go into great detail
about exactly what has been discussed, or Twitter's strategies toward
those negotiations. So while it looks like there is a lot of detail
around those discussions below, the most sensitive stuff has been
removed.

Information about Twitter's negotiations with Google and Microsoft is undeniably newsworthy; most business journalists would rush to publish exclusive information on such matters. Not all would accept documents obtained from a hacker as valid sourcing, mind you, but then TechCrunch has already crossed that particular Rubicon.

Witholding the juiciest Twitter leaks isn't going to appease TechCrunch's haters, who have called publisher Mike Arrington "a very sad excuse for a man" and worse for his use of hacker-tainted documents. What it will do is highlight how the publication is negotiating story content with the subjects of said stories, an absurd situation; if Arrington believes the documents are usable sources, and accurate, there's nothing left to negotiate.

Leakers should come to us instead; if and when we use your stuff, we won't go half-assed about it.

(Pic: Arrington by Thomas Hawk)