Buzzfeed and Uproxx are the ones you're thinking of that started out with the "pithy clickbait gradually transitioning into legitimacy" business model, some wit

Buzzfeed and Uproxx are the ones you're thinking of that started out with the "pithy clickbait gradually transitioning into legitimacy" business model, some with more success at that than others. From what I gather this is not what The Markup was built to do.