You're nitpicking the term "journalism" here, but even in casual conversation if a friend went on and on about how great a company was and then I later found out that they:

* Got paid a referral fee if I signed up

* Owned shares in the company

* Even was roommates with the founders/CEO but failed to mention it

I would trust that person less going forward.

If you want to be perceived as trustworthy, then you shouldn't say things that you have a hidden interest in saying.

To be fair, the top of the post says "Portfolio Spotlight".

I don’t mean to suggest it’s not sleazy—I think it’s sleazy by default. VC writing is not to be trusted.

Joran from TigerBeetle!

Our investors (Spark, Amplify, Coil) are different to most, in that our partners are all highly technical.

Engineers, coders, CTOs who read the same research papers and attend the same technical conferences (CIDR, VLDB, SIGMOD, HYTRADBOI etc.).

In fact, that's how we met.