Why Can't Tech Writers Write About Facebook?

What is it about Facebook that turns tech writers into a bunch of bleating neophobes? A month ago, this blithely statistic-free New York Times piece claimed that Facebook was suffering from an exodus because the author's friends didn't like it anymore. Inconvenient fact: Facebook users grew by 150% this year.

Today an MSNBC article about poking run under the sub-headline "Plenty of Facebookers would like to see this obsolete function outlawed." As you might expect, the article quotes exactly zero poke haters. How is it so hard to find a source that you've promised in the dek? Instead we get this hilarious paragraph:

Alone, the Facebook "Poke" is simply not criminal -- though there are plenty of Facebookers who'd gladly join a FB petition group to see such a law enacted. (Start one now!)

Where are these Facebookers? Where are these petitions groups? Is the author begging for sources by the second paragraph? Sheesh.

The piece ends with a winding dissertation about the social morays surrounding the issue of literal "poking." Why is it so hard to write a thoughtful criticism of Facebook?