> If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles

What makes you think that this isn't the case already? I work in this industry and I can tell you for a fact that none of those organizations are News organizations anymore. They are traffic brokers. Some of their authors still have integrity, but the organizations themselves don't care about quality. All they want is traffic. Pure and simple!