Sensationalist journalism sucks regardless of arena. In the mean time this is nothing new. Breathless media coverage of hacker exploits has been a media mainstay since the days of RTM and (later) Mitnick, and is just another manifestation of "if it bleeds, it leads".

I do think the author makes some fine points about root causes of this kind of behavior and the joys of rehabbing one's worldview with honest coding. I'm working with a skiddie right now patiently trying to bait him over from the dark side with honest code assignments. Unfortunately it looks like he just might get caught in the dragnets Anon & Lulzsec have provoked. Time will tell.

Hasn't mainstream notoriety always been one of the reasons young kids get into cracking?

Twitter may amplify this a little, but its not exactly a paradigm shift.