well hardly every since. the thing that prompted it was a HN post on how to get in touch with PG; and I have really strong memories of the Viaweb story, mostly around my dad's heart attack. Check here:
http://bit.ly/5e0XxJBear in mind, this was in the days well before blogging when getting any story out involved fighting for column cm with other journalist, and a (necessarily) sceptical business editor. I know, it seems antiquated now!
And I am not sure I said it was news. And yes, you may get semantic about this being news.ycombinator, but i'll leave you to do the detailed analysis of what qualifies since you have the media studies degree.