IMO, the quality of MG Siegler's writing is barely a step up from content farms.
MG is one of the few TC writers who editorializes pretty liberally in his posts. I appreciate that as it makes it more interesting and it doesn't bother me as I happen to agree with most of what he says. To editorialize successfully requires you to have a strong grasp of the industry, the market forces and what direction it's moving in -- all of which I think he does quite well, along the likes of MA or Om Malik.
You may not like his writing but it's a far cry from a content farm. He's a writer. He's paid to write. That's what he does.
I have no idea why you have so many upvotes, and I guess I'm really surprised so many people agree with you.
Of course it's possible. The surprising number of votes would seem to indicate people agree with him. I don't know how many down-votes he's had though.
I must respectfully disagree with your conclusion that he has a strong grasp of the industry, market forces, or direction. I have a good deal of respect for both Arrington and Malik, and I cannot say I have one iota of the same for Siegler.
He is a writer, and he is paid to write. But the same can be said for the people producing articles for Demand Media. MG's prolific rate of content production doesn't inform its level of quality.
[1] A trivial example is this article: http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/twitter-just-ui-puked-on-my... where MG fails to differentiate between Twitter's CSS files failing to load and new features. I could find more if you'd like, but this is one of the more egregious from recent memory.
[2] http://plankhead.com/blog/1146/mg-siegler-destroys-the-engli...
In regards to his grasp of tech -- I see nothing offensive about your example. He says it's probably a bug, and it was. I think his ability to grasp the implications of tech is pretty solid.
Apparently we disagree, and perhaps I even hold the contrarian viewpoint in this community. At least you can cite your criticisms which is more than I expected. :-)
Not saying that means he shouldn't write, but as a webdev it's easy to see what's wrong with that article.
Saying that MG's writing is barely a step-up from content farms is like saying The Wire is barely a step-up from Cops.
Edit: a journo friend of mine happened to mention to me that Simon is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, fwiw.
'Saying that MG's writing is barely a step-up from content farms is like saying The Wire is barely a step-up from CSI.'
COPS, at least, is real. Well, sort of.