Hey if that's what they needed to do to fund investigative journalism, I'm all for it.

Investigative journalism is even harder to monetize than regular journalism. For example, you can't really publish a sponsored article.

I agree and In fact that's exactly what I thought when I saw their 'donate' button. It enforces my opinion that the 'Buzzfeed News' is genuinely trying to do some real journalism.

Why wouldn't they be? Just because people read dumb things doesn't mean they are dumb themselves.

I didn't say that, My statement was regarding technical nature of user's interest.

I'm genuinely curious about Buzzfeed's rationale to build a factual news site when their brand represented anything but that i.e. 'Going against what their recommendation engine would typically suggest for their users'.

Because youth culture loves to exist in dichotomy. The stupid clickbait site and the proper news sight being part of the same thing is the appeal. Similar reasoning to how comedy/news has become a booming format. Doing something stupid and doing something serious at the same time is the zeitgeist.

That's very interesting, If true then the recommendation engine would have indeed identified the supposed dichotomy thereby justifying the decision to stick with their brand.

It does generally mean they are interested in dumb things though. The demographics of people who read those are quite a bit different than those who read long form content.