Those aren't even the important numbers. With 22x the number of articles and the ratio of small and mid stage startup to tech giant articles half of what it used to be, even finding the articles in the noise is a joke.
Then, once found, we have to deal with the quality problem you mention.
TechCrunch left my reading list almost a year ago for these reasons.
What do you use then to just keep yourself aware of new startups coming up? I am not looking for sites like BothSidesofTable and others from VCs or Cofounders. I am looking for a site that jusat tells me X is a cool service that does this and launched last week.
Sites like Startupli.st and betali.st have too many useless (sorry to those working hard at them) sites which makes it difficult to go and check each one of them.
So yes what other sources exist to get a superficial overlook of new startups.
I can't answer for SoftwareMaven but I use the same sources as where I get my news, such as HN. Any startup worth its salt is content marketing, blogging, podcasting, or whatever, and its stuff comes up on sites like HN.
That said, sites like ReadWriteWeb and Mashable also cover the beat well.
That's what I suggested with the quotes, at this rate startup news will drawn.
But fortunately we have way more (quality) startup news sources these days.
Then, once found, we have to deal with the quality problem you mention.
TechCrunch left my reading list almost a year ago for these reasons.