Out of the AOL / TechCrunch drama factory came PandoDaily earlier this year. The news site launched as one focused on startups and it looked a lot like “TechCrunch All-Stars.”.

Part of the plan was to have TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington as well as fellow CrunchFund partner and current (sometimes) writer for TechCrunch MG Siegler jump (and stay) on as contributors – a plan that apparently went awry on Monday. According to a post on PandoDaily by Founder and CEO Sarah Lacy, Arrington and Siegler are out at the new site after shareholders voted to yank Arrington as a director.

As of Monday, April 9 the shareholders of PandoMedia voted to remove Michael Arrington as a director. Given the change in relationship we feel it’s inappropriate for CrunchFund’s partners Michael Arrington and MG Siegler to continue contributing to PandoDaily. We thank MG for his many stellar contributions to date and Michael for his support in the early days of the company.

The announcement was abbreviated and they disabled comments on the post. There hasn’t been anything more from PandoDaily’s end on the matter.

But Arrington and Siegler both posted about the move, and they seem to agree on a root cause: their participation in TechCrunch Disrupt.

Here’s what Arrington had to say on Uncrunched:

This wasn’t a complete surprise to me, the company notified me last week that they weren’t happy that I and MG Siegler (my partner at CrunchFund) were going to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt this coming May.

Part of the reason that I’m speaking at Disrupt is that I have a contractual commitment to do so as part of my break with them last year, which Sarah knew about before our involvement in Pando. But MG and I are also speaking there because we still love TechCrunch. And we both speak at many other conferences as well.

Siegler echoed this on his blog:

Lots of questions about the PandoDaily situation. To be completely honest, I’m a bit surprised by how this went down. I think Michael’s response is appropriate.

The problem seemed to be us participating in TechCrunch Disrupt (and I assume more Michael than myself since I’m still a TechCrunch contributor). But we both speak at a lot of conferences. And I view it as valuable that we speak at a wide range of conferences.

Both Arrington and Siegler also mention that they think PandoDaily has potential to succeed, even though neither will be a part of it. At this point, nobody seems to be shocked by any drama that comes out of this bunch: