I'm launching a site next week for Internet-related job listings in the SF Bay Area for just this reason. The bigger sites annoyed me both as an employer and as a job seeker for the reasons you mention. I reached out directly to friends and HR folks at local companies and have a pretty good number of listings to start. Hopefully this will be a bit more targeted. I'll post to Ask HN for feedback, post-launch.

Good point. There's been an increasing awareness of the ineffectiveness of the bigger job boards, of which Dice is certainly one, over the past year or so thanks to people like Nick Crocodilo. This may be as much or more a reflection of a long-term downward trend in postings on Dice and Monster, versus on smaller, more targeted job boards or more local ones like Craigslist. In their shortsighted attempt to feed on the fear and insecurity of their target audience regarding the economy and the job market, I would not be surprised if Techcruch has missed the opportunity to write about the more interesting but less obvious story behind the headline. Nor should I be surprised given the editorial style and attention-hungry focus of Techcrunch. Such a mindset tends not to produce a lot of thoughtful analysis for fear of losing the mass audience.