Mashable Says It Fired Editor-at-Large Ben Parr

November 20, 2011 at 5:21 pm PT

Tech news site Mashable and its editor-at-large, Ben Parr, have parted ways under circumstances that apparently were less than amicable. The writer and entrepreneur, who had worked for the site since 2008, was fired, according to a brief Mashable statement.

Word of Parr’s departure began to bubble out late Sunday, when mail to his Mashable address started kicking back an automated “no longer here” response, and his bio page was edited to identify him as “the former editor-at-large.”

Parr then confirmed his departure to AllThingsD, indicating that he’d have more to say on Monday. Mashable limited its official response to a single sentence, “confirming the terms of departure were termination.”

Expect a volley of “he said, they said” exchanges to follow.

Tagged with: Ben Parr, Mashable

comments so far. Add yours.

Anonymous

wow…didn’t expect him to leave.
http://www.withinwindows.com Rafael R.

Sigh. Here’s a proper link to his profile http://mashable.com/author/ben-parr/.
http://twitter.com/buckleup Luke Buckle

He is yet to change his facebook employment status
Anonymous

Was anyone else consistently disappointed by Parr’s coverage? I work in one of the industries he wrote about and found his writing often missing-the-point shallow. Sure, good for him for making it as big as he did, but we need better coverage, and his was not, um, up to…
Tony Camilli

He probably got tired of rehashing news that everyone else covered yesterday.
http://benjaminlang.com Ben Lang

Wonder if Mashable will turn into TechCrunch — look forward to the drama, or not.
http://twitter.com/iconoclastd Digital Iconoclast

so, they “fired” him for doing original reporting?
Anonymous

If he was just rehashing stuff from yesterday it wasn’t very original.

That said, yes perhaps that rehashing was a factor in the game. Blogs, including Mashable, make their money on page hits and the ad revenue those hits generate. If they were just rehashing yesterday’s news, it’s possible that a few too many folks were not visiting Mashable and were going to the ‘better’ source instead. So not enough hits were coming in for the desired revenue to be generated
Lianne Lindeke

I don’t consider Mashable a totally credible source for detailed information. They started off as a great place for me to find how-to’s and resources in web design/dev and social media. But I still don’t cite them as a dependable news source. the image is from mashable.