"This hacker culture of thinking everything can be solved with guru developer skills needs to stop."
Why? I don't see a downside to self-assuredness, even downright arrogance, when it comes to tackling problems. Sure, maybe every problem can't be solved by every person who tries, but why should you or anyone else care if they are willing to give it a shot?
He isn't saying that hackers shouldn't try to solve problems. He's just saying that they should go about solving them with more understanding and in a more intelligent manner.
No, but (s)he does seem to be of the opinion that they shouldn't be trying to solve this one:
"I just wish people stop thinking that journalism is a technology problem.It doesn't matter how good your platform is."
Maybe that's true. Maybe the Newslab guys were doomed to fail from the beginning. However, who's to say they shouldn't have tried? There's nothing wrong with trying out an idea no matter how slim its chance of success might seem to be.
I don't feel like you're comparing like with like here. TC, HuffPo, Drudge, etc are all content providers/aggregators. Newstilt on the other hand were going to provide services and software to journalists of which it seems aggregation was only a part.
From this outsider's perspective at least they seemed to be in a good position starting out. They had seemingly recruited established journalists and other people from the industry who were able to tell them what they needed.
I don't think it's far fetched to think that a startup like this that marries software and journalism could form the basis of a successful startup. I do think this could be done with mostly if not entirely technical founders. I think others are betting on that too:
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/admissions/page.aspx?id=5...
Why? I don't see a downside to self-assuredness, even downright arrogance, when it comes to tackling problems. Sure, maybe every problem can't be solved by every person who tries, but why should you or anyone else care if they are willing to give it a shot?