I think you are overanalyzing/overthinking this a bit. All of these things have pretty much already happened. The headline is the story - if anything, it has

I think you are overanalyzing/overthinking this a bit. All of these things have pretty much already happened. The headline is the story - if anything, it has gone one step further, the URL is the story, that's what people copy and paste to their friends with the headline embedded, nobody clicks, and if they do they don't read it. Sometimes news organizations are acquired, e.g. Sleepopolis + any and all other such websites were just bought by mattress manufacturers. Bloomberg is kind of one of the better news outfits... but it's also kind of just an ad to sell more terminals/subscriptions. Yelp, Glassdoor, BBB, TripAdvisor, Angies List, etc... any kind of "consumer review" site always ends up totally captured by the folks being reviewed. Standalone news orgs like NYT, News Corp/FOX, etc just have cozy relationships with their advertisers, so it's pretty much an outsourcing arrangement - there's no need for advertisers to acquire, better that they just focus on their core business and buy ads. This is what you get / can expect for "free", "ad supported", etc. If you want quality information, you can get it, but you'll have to pay for it.