That is certainly what I used to love about Techcrunch, and whilst I think it is natural that as they have gotten bigger they have gone more mainstream and do a lot more coverage of Twitter, iPads etc, it also a shame and certainly taken them from my "first website of the day" to "if something interesting comes into RSS feed I'll click".
At the same time if you go back a few years there were quite a few startups that were really doing different things, and reviewing them was worthwhile. Now there are often so many startups trying to solve the same problem that choosing who to review and keep track of must be a nightmare, and half the comments will be "if you like X take a look at my company Y".
Speaking of Y's, is there an independent blog that just reviews (and meets with etc) Y Combinator companies - that actually would be an interesting read!