>"My hat is off to TechCrunch for energetically filling the void in startup coverage that had opened up by the mid-2000s, after the collapse of dot-com-era biztech publications such as the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Red Herring"

And that's exactly what TechCrunch is/was: the next-in-line tech media player that filled the vacuum and rode the next bubble to the peak. Then fell apart.

The tech media and tech industry aren't really separate entities. They're part of the same machine.