It's a bit surreal. Engadget interprets "becoming patent-free" as "being retired". Gizmodo interprets it as "it's dead". We're not in a world where file format fanboys have the writing prowess to hold positions in the media right?
Rhetorical questions...
Who are these people for whom the thought of not making that money causes them such stress and anguish?
...furthermore, what were they like as children?
I don't regret ripping my entire collection as AAC / lossless but I also acknowledge that the space savings are basically a waste of time for anyone not using good speakers / headphones in a very quiet environment, and outside of a handful of pieces susceptible to pre-echo lossless was a hedge against double-encoding in the somewhat unlikely event that the future codec landscape changes dramatically.
As it stands though, we just get to apply Occham: in online news media, A/Bing truth vs lies for clicks has a clear winner.
The writers at all the AOL and Gawker franchises are the end result of this trend - a million monkeys sitting at typewriters.