This does boil down to a point: do media and blogs write about startups that are interesting and/or important, or those who they can grab coffee, beers etc with

This does boil down to a point: do media and blogs write about startups that are interesting and/or important, or those who they can grab coffee, beers etc with. Quite often I've found being in the same city with someone covering helps you immensely, as many European startups can attest to. Hard to build those relationships from another city. Same goes for investors, biz dev partners etc.