I nearly skimmed over this line but it's pretty important:
"The classifier was trained by the developer using Buzzfeed headlines as clickbait and New York Times headlines as non-clickbait."
"The classifier was trained by the developer using Buzzfeed headlines as clickbait and New York Times headlines as non-clickbait."
I've thought that Times article headlines have been more clickbaity over time. Some articles, especially if they aren't related to current events, are becoming more casual in their voice as well.
If they can maintain quality journalism by only sacrificing headline quality, that is probably a good and necessary tradeoff to make.