I see Buzzfeed's innovation as largely around the continued development of the "Contributor Model" for content, which drives down the per-unit cost of content b

I see Buzzfeed's innovation as largely around the continued development of the "Contributor Model" for content, which drives down the per-unit cost of content by turning to non-fulltime outsiders to help create content along side full-time staffers. Medium taps into this, as did Quora before it. Vice is pretty innovative around web content but no new formats that I know of and a typical "stringer" model with high editorial touch. Quartz is visually different (super slick JS based webapp) but the underlying news is the same that you get elsewhere.