I think a lot of people have always had a negative view of Travis Kalanick and Uber's business practices, but they enjoyed the convenience of the service just enough to look the other way. Between the soaring valuation and recent events, that balance has shifted to the point where some people now refuse to use the service. At the same time, there is a lot of schadenfreude by people who disagree either with the valuation, or Travis Kalanick and the company's ethos. The media is just tapping into this interest with their coverage, as is their nature to do. So if anything, I'd say it's more like karmic retribution than a coordinated smear campaign.

It's not a smear campaign; it's a feeding frenzy. When public perception shifts one way or another, the stories follow to cover it in that angle (though you'd expect at some point there'd be some contrarian hot takes that take an apologist stance towards Uber, maybe something like "Don't blame Uber. Blame the tech industry/gig economy/etc."). There's something rotten at the company, so journalists will naturally shift to cover it and dig up every juice piece of mud they can rake.

Same thing happened to RIM a few years back. None of this is personal. It's just a domino effect.

Doubt that, Uber became a company that's popular to hate, and any negative news on the company is going to get a lot of eyeballs.