Mike Arrington takes a fair bit of heat for the stuff he does at TechCrunch — even I have taken a shot at him when I think he has overstepped his bounds, like I did when he made those comments about Dave Winer and Rafat Ali the other day (see post below) — but for the record I think he is getting a lot of unnecessary crap about the dismissal of Sam Sethi from TechCrunch UK.

Much has been made of the fact that Mike doesn’t consider himself a journalist, and how TechCrunch isn’t journalism but something else that combines — or even embraces — conflicts of interest among those its covers, etc. etc. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think Mike has done anything different with respect to Sam Sethi than any editor of a magazine would do under the same circumstances, unless there are significant details that haven’t come to light (there’s a good roundup here).

As far as I can tell, Sam got called an asshole by Loic Le Meur for the review he gave Le Web, then Mike and Sam differed about whether to remove that comment (because Loic felt badly about it), at which point Sam not only left the comment up but wrote a post (archived here) in which he said TechCrunch was going to start having its own conferences in the UK and Le Web was history.

I would agree with Mike that the latter move crossed an important ethical boundary. If you’re the editor of a magazine — which is what I think TechCrunch and Gigaom and PaidContent and other similar networks might as well be — you can’t trash a conference and promote your own in the same breath. That’s just not on. And I think Mike was right to make it an issue. In other words, I think Tom Morris is wrong to call it an example of Old Boys Club 2.0.

It’s too bad Sam and Mike couldn’t work it out, but I give Mike some props for putting it all out there on his blog and taking the inevitable fire from the armchair quarterbacks who see it as an arrogant American throwing his weight around in the UK or whatever. I think he did what had to be done.

Update:

Sam Sethi has pointed out that he and Mike were 50-50 partners on TechCrunch UK (which I don’t think was widely known), and that as far as he is concerned it was the decision not to remove Loic’s offensive comment that soured the relationship between the two. Mike’s post, however, makes it clear that it was the decision to promote TechCrunch UK’s events at the same time as he was trashing Le Web.

Mike Butcher, co-editor of TechCrunch UK, has posted a long open letter to Mike about the incident, and Duncan Riley has posted hilarious PDF of the entire debacle. To complicate matters further, there’s a comment on the TechCrunch UK post about Sam’s dismissal from “TCAdmin” (which is the name Mike Arrington had been using) saying: “I was being such a stupid arsehole I am so sorry. TCUK will be back shortly.” Someone spoofing the name, or has Mike reconsidered?

Nick Denton, the Gawker Media supremo who recently took over as editor of Valleywag (former editor Nick Douglas just popped up at Huffington Post’s Eat The Press), loves to take shots at a few people — including Jason Calacanis, who is apparently now an executive with venture group Sequioa Capital — and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is definitely high up on that list.

Nick loves to use a graphic with Mike’s face and the logo “Red Herrington” (which is a shot on several different levels), and he never misses a chance to try and take the piss — as the British say — by making fun of TechCrunch or Mike’s various other interests. So it’s interesting to see Nick providing some friendly advice to his nemesis in a recent Valleywag post.

The reason for his advice was a comment by Mike in a recent profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which TechCrunch is described (somewhat breathlessly) as “Mr. Web 2.0,” a kingmaker among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.” At one point, when asked whether there is anyone against whom he holds a grudge, he says Nick Denton — because “Nick Denton is evil.”

And the advice from Nick? “If you’re in a good old-fashioned tabloid war, never let them get to you — and never ever let them know they’ve got to you.” In other words, chill out dude (which is exactly what Mike has said he plans to do, taking two months off to rest and ski at his parents’ place in upstate Washington). Or, as old military types like to say: “Illegitimus non carborundum” — which loosely translates as “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

I’m just throwing this out there — not because I know anything (because I don’t), and not because I have any ulterior motives (I don’t even have any posterior motives), but just because it occurred to me, and the more I thought about it the more it seemed to make sense. I guess I’m posting it here because I want to see if anyone agrees with me. Even if you don’t, feel free to let me know.

I think Mike Arrington should merge his burgeoning global TechCrunch empire with Om Malik’s growing gigaom.com network. Why? Well, the benefits would be obvious, I think — more sites and more readers equals a bigger player when it comes to advertising space, and that’s the name of the game when you’re trying to build what amounts to an online magazine business.

I guess what got me started thinking about it was when I noticed that Mike’s blogs, including TechCrunch and MobileCrunch, linked to Om’s blog when he had a post about something, and Om has done the same thing with Mike — which makes sense, since they cover things that overlap a lot of the time, and they also know each other and are friends. Mike has even given a boost to Om’s Widgets Live conference.

And then I got thinking about how little overlap there really is between the two: Mike does Web 2.0 services and gadgets and that kind of thing, while Om concentrates on telecom and broadband stuff and some mobile coverage. Why not join forces and have something that covers all of those things better than anyone? Then Mike could get closer to his recently-stated wish of having more page views that CNet.