FWIW I come to HN for the comments, not really for the articles. I think maybe half of us use HN this way.

This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline, and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving them.

This is to say I'm actually fairly sure the platform approach, at least from first principals, beats the traditional approach in terms of quality.

(On a side note, I just had an awful thought: are there PR people reaching out to the top HN authors?)