You're being overly literal. The definition of "oral history" in this context is telling a story through the personal experiences and recollections of people who were there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_history

It bugs me, too. Nowadays, "An oral history of X" just means "We interviewed multiple people related to X, and here is a written article containing some of their quotes."

That's a lot different from what the Oral History Association describes in its principles and best practices, where the focus is on preserving sound recordings of interviews:

https://www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and-practices-r...

NYT is still a notch above "You wont believe the history..." or "Your jaw will drop when you find out about...", but they need some hook to make you curious.

“We asked a professional shopper about BB&B coupons and you won’t believe what he had to say”

“This one weird trick you can only use at BB&B”

“10 things you can do with a BB&B coupon. Number 8 will amaze you”

“BB&B managers hate him”

“BB&B coupons considered harmful”

“BB&B coupons are an anti-pattern”

“BB&B coupons now available on npm”

“BB&B coupons with Tensor Flow”

“CSS-only BB&B coupons”

“BB&B coupons in 6 lines of JavaScript”

“Paul Graham on BB&B coupons”

"I wrote a BB&B coupon scraper in Rust"

Managing your BB&B coupons with Emacs & org-mode

And you won't believe how safe those coupons are

“Fast lightweight BB&B coupons library in Go”

“BB&B coupons using an ESP8266”

Things programmers believe about BB&B coupons

A new one I have seen recently: "BB&B has fixed the worst thing about coupons"

Store your BB&B coupons in this new type of online notebook I wrote.

> The verdict was still out on social media. One user tweeted "Why do I keep getting these in the mail? Nonsense." Another argued "I quite like these coupons, they're a nice treat."

The jury is out until the verdict comes out.