I wonder why it's so hard to get positive coverage for LW and so easy to get negative coverage, when in contrast Wired magazine gave Cypherpunks a highly positive cover story in 1993, when Cypherpunks just got started and hadn't done much yet except publish a few manifestos.

There's an easy answer and a hard answer.

The easy answer is that, for whatever reason, the media today is far more likely to run a negative story about the tech industry or associated demographics than to run a positive story about it. LW is close enough to the tech industry, and its assumed/stereotyped demographic pattern is close enough to that of the tech industry, that attacking it is a way to attack the tech industry.

Observe:

"highly analytical sorts interested in optimizing their thinking, their lives, and the world through mathematics and rationality ... techno-futurism ... high-profile techies like Peter Thiel ... some very influential and wealthy scientists and techies believe it ... computing power ... computers ... computer ... mathematical geniuses Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann ... The ever accelerating progress of technology ... Futurists like science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge and engineer/author Kurzweil ... exponential increases in computing power ... Yudkowsky and Peter Thiel have enthused about cryonics, the perennial favorite of rich dudes ... the machine equivalent of God ... rational action ... a smattering of parallel universes and quantum mechanics on the side ... supercomputer ... supercomputer ... supercomputer ... supercomputer ... autism ... Yudkowsky and other so-called transhumanists are attracting so much prestige and money for their projects, primarily from rich techies ... messianic ambitions, being convinced of your own infallibility, and a lot of cash"

Out of the many possible ways to frame the article, Slate chose to make it about "rich techies". Why postulate that Omega has a supercomputer? Why repeat the word 'supercomputer' four times in five sentences? The LW wiki doesn't mention computers of any sort, and the Wikipedia article only uses the word 'computer' twice. advancedatheist said above that the cryonics claim is false; assuming he's right, why include a lie?

It's clearly not a neutral explanation of the Basilisk -- and it fits into a pattern.

The hard answer would include an explanation of this pattern. (I'm not sure whether it would be a good idea to speculate about this in this particular thread, so: anyone who's tempted to do so, take five minutes and think over the wisdom of it beforehand.)

Personal contact via the people employed in the Wired magazine and a lot of hackers are quite strong. Wired had actually an intention of pushing projects like Cypherpunks or in the last years the Quantified Self movement which they essentially founded (Keven Kelly and Gary Wolf are both Wired Editors).

I don't think that LW is really the place that needs positive PR. I can't really think of a story about LW that I want to tell a reporter. I can think of stories about MIRI or about CFAR but LW itself doesn't need PR.