Maybe the same reason why a journalist tried to dox Slate Star Codex. Which is to say, who knows but it probably isn't good.

It's really uncomfortable reading the part where they say that they aren't publishing personal information from the memo as if they're doing something to protect her privacy when they've given the internet way too much information on this person already. Things like the state of her mental health, some signal into her economic status, etc. Things that even non-devs on the internet could pick up on, it's so tone-deaf.

It sounds like she published an internal memo, somebody else leaked it, and the personal information was a fourth party's.

I hope that person that leaked her memo had a ridiculous amount of social capital built up with her, though I seriously doubt it.

Reading it over more closely, the article doesn't exclude the possibility that the person who leaked the memo was actually Ms Zhang. The anonymous "other software engineer" might just be another source the authors know, or even a reference given by the "leaker".

The simplest answer is that journalism relies heavily on credibility and BuzzFeed's brand has almost none of that as far as the public is concerned. If this was the WaPo or NYT they could probably get away with the usual "We'd tell you but that would be unprofessional."

Yet NYT still threatened to doxx Slate Star Codex.