One of the most important aspects of a news site is having a good community. A lot of the value of sites like news.yc aren't the links themselves, it's the comments provided by the technially adept community. That's not to say that the links are unimporant, it's that they aren't unique - most of the links come from a a small subset of tech news sites.

One thing I don't like is articles that are purely about business cycles. Company A raised 10 million dollars, or is dead, or is running out of money, or is being acquired. Somtimes that can be interesting, but I'm partial to writers that have a sense of humor, and are good at putting things into perspective. I like writing from guys like Zed Shaw, or Matt Maroon -- they're enterntaining.