There was probably a more tight-knit/closely-connected (?) startup ecosystem back in the day when TC was a thing. Today it's probably too varied and large and has too many subsets.

Techcrunch is still the leader for stories like "Company A has raised $B million to do C" which my friends and I are very interested in when we are interested in C.

I guess. On the other hand that's the sort of inside baseball news most people I know have zero interest in.