While some blogs do offer excellent in depth coverage of one area (TC, Frantic Industries etc), being in depth is not a unique and inalienable property of a blog. It’s perfectly possible to have a printed publication or a general website that is written by a team of focussed, knowledgable individuals, just as much as it’s possible to have a blog written by someone that’s about anything and everything. And in some respects, this is simply a rediscovery of an old truth about any publication, whatever its medium: its writers must also be its readers (or be typical of them). That’s what made Rolling Stone good in the 60s, it’s what made Wired great in the 90s, and it’s what makes TechCrunch what it is.

Specifically, for the example you mentioned, Red Herring could never have been better than TechCrunch when it comes to web startups simply because Red Herring can’t devote one or two or three people only to this field and TechCrunch can.

However, the point that bloggers are beating mainstream media because at the mainstream media journalists “doesn’t have the time” to dig through Digg etc seems a bit disingenous - after all, it’s not as if the mainstream media journalists are sitting around on their arses all day long (well, not the good ones, and if we’re debating good journalists vs bad journalists, we may as well also debate good bloggers vs bad ones, too). The mainstream media reporters are generating, researching and writing stories in much the same way as the bloggers are, only on more mainstream titles, they will be covering a wider selection of topics. The important thing for any publication, be it print or web, is that it provides information at a level that satisfies its readers: Red Herring obviously wasn’t good enough to compete with TechCrunch, Valleywag and your goodself. I’m not sure there’s that much more to it than that.

Ramon Ray - http://www.smallbiztechnology.com