I stopped reading techcrunch about 9 months ago, after realizing that the majority of articles were friends of the author - and realizing it was almost impossible to get featured on there unless you were connected in some kind of monetary way.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for "it's just a blog, man".
It was probably this way even before the internet. I mean, they award themselves the "Pulitzer Prize"--go look up the guy that one's named after.
It's no co-incidence. Techcrunch is the same as it was 2 years back, probably venom from Siegler has increased