You get worked up over the oddest things Boobs, especially as you seemingly only start to despise them after they start making money. What does that change? Basically reaRAB like envy because they have such a ****ing sweet job. I know if I could ever get paid to review music I'd jump at the chance, wouldn't you?
Granted the internet has made a lot of music criticism obsolete because so many people are willing to do it for free, and democratised the setting of critical opinion, but that doesn't devalue paid criticism. Because if you're getting paid to write this stuff then chances are you're better than 90% of the dross out there, simply by knowing your **** and being a fluent writer. rab and the other blogs I visit are great and more useful than any magazine, but they are a minority of music writing on the web.
Maybe it's because I don't read it enough to catch the bad reviews, but I like Pitchfork. Generally they have good reviews and fair scores, they might be a little pretentious sometimes and take a circuitous route in their review, but exploring the themes and ideas in an album is a lot more interesting than a simple description of the music which rarely excites me. I think perhaps you're projecting the elitism onto them, I never read anything that makes me feel they think their word is gospel. Putting IMO after every review so you don't piss anybody off gets fecking tiresome.