garyr_h - 3:17 am on Apr 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

Yes, I've been noticing it as well. I'm also seeing EzineArticles getting ranked well at times (bouncing around, mostly).

Also seeing newspapers.

I *think* it has more to do with Google ranking pages which aren't completely related to the overall theme of the site. Maybe a retune of their "if x isn't related to the theme then it doesn't rank well" algorithm. Probably just expanded to something like if Y>10,000 pages then X related to Z% of pages then show in index with N% of link juice available.