I have a blog with many outgoing links to pages that are not all referred to the subject matter of the blog, you can have about 150 links, many of which are directories .... It has also been a blog that I've worked hard, with many ups in directories and link exchanges, etc. and I believe that G does not have much worth, in terms of position, although in terms of PR. These outbound links, may be hurting?
Definitely it will hurt your ranking unless the link is related to your site and helps towards providing more information on top of your existing content.
There's some blog directory that actually shows up as google backlinks and if they're on google's backlinks I think it depends on what directories you're putting your site on.
No I personally dont think that all these directory site links does harm the blog's pagerank, as I myself have a blog with lot of outgoing (directory site) links which jumped up from PR2 to PR4 in the last update. However its better to restrict the links between 25 to 50. Also if possible check for some high ranked directory site links only.
Even Google might not give any negative toward your website now, but you should be selective on outbound links from the beginning to prevent big problems later. 1. Those 150 links is too many in my opinion. 2. Linking to directory may not too much off-topic but I would recommend you do exchange link only with relevant websites instead of general web directory. It would help you significantly.
I think anything over 50 is spam and under 25 is about right... I would suggest you cut back to the sites that are in your niche...