Maybe the author is motivated by their personal reputation?

What benefit is there to keeping it all secret?

I suppose you could argue the benefit of keeping it private is that it doesn't let their readers see all the personal drama and histrionics that could impinge their editorial/journalistic credibility e.g. it's their job to report tech news, not to be a platform to communicate their personal feelings about internal office politics.

I get the feeling that this article is precisely as a result of the 'new media' model of content production at sites like TechCrunch. The author rightly lauds this models dynamism and agility in the article on his personal site (that was linked in the article) but do you think something like this, that's so close to verging on unprofessional, would happen at a more conventional publication? Because I certainly don't.

I agree, this wouldn't happen at a more conventional publication.

Open questions: Will this sort of thing become the new normal, as blogs become more mainstream and legacy publications take on some of their attributes? And would it be an improvement if it did?

Yes, TechCrunch should be about tech news and not about their office politics. But does publishing it disproportionately harm their credibility, or does not publishing it give them credibility they don't deserve? c.f. phone hacking by UK newspapers.

Read the article, AOL already destroyed any sense of journalistic credibility. Right now they're just trying to get their side of the story out before AOL officially responds to its own f-up by shooting the messengers.

Publicity. Honesty.