'Starts With A Bang' is generally lowest-common-denominator physics writing. I'd imagine any negative connotations to be well earned.
I know a lot of physics, and have strong opinions on physics writing, but I still think this was a pretty interesting and entertaining article. If we have problems with it can we say what they are instead of just assuming everyone agrees that it's bad?
There are completely mundane explanations (upper atmosphere models slightly wrong, unaccounted-for EM effects) so while there may be a fundamental cause (gravity is doing something exciting) the odds are that it's a boring effect, just like the superluminal neutrino observations.
I didn't find the writing misleading at all. It didn't overstate the likelihood that there is actually new physics to be found in these anomalies and gave a specific example where an anomaly was explained by known physics that was merely unaccounted for.
Discovering that the Pioneer probes were off due to the moment of their thermal radiation was not 'new physics', but it was still interesting, in that it was missed in the initial attempt at modeling. And that's fine. It's still interesting and made for good reading.
Anyway, I liked it. I don't think it was mediocre at all.
http://slashdot.org/~StartsWithABang
It's B-grade science writing, written to be interesting and informative to a mass audience. It probably does fairly well on its own terms. However, I'm not personally interested in a remedial physics education, I'm interested in physics news. For me, that's where SwaB consistently falls short. Or, to be more concise, the blog is generally lowest-common-denominator physics writing. I am unpleasantly surprised to be met with contradiction and derision based on your reading of one article.