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.
David - I feel he has a weak grasp on many fundamentals of modern technology[1]. His grammar and spelling are the subject of widespread mockery[2].
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.
In regards to the poor grammar -- I've no doubt they prioritize posting speed in exchange for a more liberal writing style policy.
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. :-)
His ability to grasp tech is missing the instinct that sees those numbers (re: the Twitter UI "bug") and immediately thinks "Oh, duh, ordered-list tag is showing numbers when it shouldn't be. CSS file error. Happens a lot when I use Facebook and static files don't get loaded properly. Not worth writing about."
Not saying that means he shouldn't write, but as a webdev it's easy to see what's wrong with that article.
Why are you surprised so many people agrees with him? Do you think it might be possible that MG's writing is really bad and a lot of people sees it but you don't?
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.
MG is one of the very few tech writers with both intellect, style, and sass, and it's this type of writing that differentiates TC from some tech-content-wasteland. He has a voice and a following, though maybe that following doesn't reside here on HN.
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.
David Simon's work has won Edgars, Peabodys, and more, and has been nominated for Emmys, WGAs and many other awards I'm not able to look up right now. Has MG even won a Webby? I'd love to see MG produce better content. I read TC just like everyone else, and having less but better content would be a huge step forward to my mind.
Edit: a journo friend of mine happened to mention to me that Simon is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, fwiw.
