It occurs to me that what BuzzFeed's doing is that following the mantra of "Don't create something unless you're sure you can sell it"
They've mastered the art of selling a product (Journalism, faux or otherwise), now they're attempting to produce as much of it as they can.
They've also realized that there's a market for all sorts of it, from the low-brow click-bait up to the hard hitting investigative stuff and are attempting to fill all the slots.
The next decade (or just 2-4 years) is really going to be interesting.
I've been pleasantly surprised by some of Buzzfeed's journalism. This article [1], a rich narrative following one of the few female boxing judges, has original reporting and is well written. Funnily enough, I discovered this article via a link from New York Times' wonderful new NYT Now app.
I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't seen any of the output yet, as it's rather new, but Buzzfeed started expanding their operations past lists of gifs sometime last year. Going as far as hiring an investigative team in late 2013 and getting some industry names (e.g. Pulitzer winner Mark Schoofs) to join by using the money from an enormous venture round offer higher salaries than many of their competitors.
Well, it is surprising, but between all these lists of funny gifs and celebrity photos lie a solid, proper journalism stuff. For example, they recently started a political ruckus with a single article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/bidens-son-polish-ex-presi...
I don't get all the Buzzfeed hate. I've loved it from the first minute and it's constantly getting better. And I'm in my late forties having grown up on and still pay for quality journalism.
Buzzfeed appears to be making a real go at the investigative journalism thing and it'll be interesting to see what they do.