The second problem is that he clickbait style of story is eminently easy to algorithmize. What will happen when there are a million websites running algorithmically generated stories all pulled from each other?
The biggest problem for journalism posed by the Web is that it has made advertising almost worthless. It used to be that newspapers could charge enough for ads to pay journalists decent wages. Now the Web has both vastly increased the supply of advertising space, which even with modestly increased demand has driven the price down by a lot, and allowed advertisers to measure the effect their ads have (spoiler: not much) which has also driven down the price.
Partial paywalls have helped some venues, and that may be the way journalism goes in the end, but subscribers weren't enough to pay for newspapers and it's difficult to see how they are going to be enough to pay for websites that perform the same function and so have most of the same costs.
Most sites using crap attention grabbing headlines need to do so to attract clicks when their user base are ones who scoff at paying anything at all to consume their content.
I prefer simple cash myself.
First - the cat is out of the bag, and never going back, when it comes to applying direct response & testing methodology to journalism.
I recently had the pleasure of bumping into a YC-startup called naytev.com that optimizes social content to go viral.
Essentially they work to find the perfect blend of image / headline to maximize # of shares, clicks, etc.
If your competitor is using a platform this advanced to drive traffic to their stories you are either also using it or going out of business.
Unfortunately what works best by default today is PT Barnum style headlines - loud, obnoxious, dangerous, death-defying!
Second - and here's where I'm hopeful - every new iteration of internet advertising / optimizing works great until the novelty wears thin for consumers.
The whole "Dermatologists hate her" headline that drove affiliate marketing ~3 years ago has now devolved to a meme on reddit and shifting strategy due to lowered CTR.
Given "content marketing" and "content journalisms" extremely popularity at the moment I assume that as we wear out the consumer brain with PT Barnum headline screaming we'll see that give way to something else we can all decide to complain about in 2016.