Well, but it's not for news — it's not supposed to be, and that's OK. I don't use pinterest much, except for creative pursuits. For example, browsing for inspiration for calligraphic scripts is a lot of fun on Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=textura+quadrata https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=cadel+flourish https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=caligrafitti

I treat it as a source of inspiration, not information.

I think the problem is that people see the beauty of the pinterest layout (which works well for pinning images) and then adapt it to show textual content (which works much worse than a plain list of headlines for scanning news).

Right, but that just means they have made a design that suits what is being displayed on their website.

"A picture is worth a thousand words"

Depends on the words, the picture and the audience. I wouldn't attempt to understand your API's system contract via a picture of the computer.

One of the concerns I have is that we may end up moving to a very image-oriented media that finds it difficult to meaningfully communicate certain thoughts - and perhaps encourages an audience largely unable and/or unwilling to meaningfully attempt to understand them.

That's television. The web is a step up from TV in that regard.

And they said the same thing about TV just a decade ago. I'm pretty sure it's still bullshit, just like it was wrt. TV.