Ask HN: Getting Buzz for your site on popular blogs & media, how much is really PR? (Yes, Techcrunch sucks)

This question reminds me about some startups I had seen that had not get coverage on Techcrunch, Mashable and Readwriteweb. Personally I think the Techcrunch guys are quite arrogant. If you send them an email about a useful startup and if you don't know someone there, it's unlikely they will review your startup, even if it's a quality product.

I said this because, I also had seen stupid product ideas and getting coverage on techcrunch, one is like a tinyurl for google searches (this is very simple, in just some lines of code), the other is the simple idea of the google fight (two queries, see who has more results).

So my question is how much is knowing the right person, rather than having the right product?

To get coverage, to get the first buzz.