Buzzfeed does a lot of fluff ("You won't believe these 87 talking cats") plus decent, fairly well-regarded journalism (paid for by the fluff). This actually isn't that different to how normal papers operate; sports, gossip (called 'society' if the paper is sufficiently fancy) etc, bring in the money, with investigative journalism not exactly being a big earner. The difference is that Buzzfeed had the fluff before it did journalism.

Due to the travails of the news industry, there are currently a lot of good journalists and not a lot of jobs for them, so this sort of non-traditional route works. Teen Vogue is another example, arguably, though a less dramatic one; surprisingly good journalism in an outlet where you wouldn't traditionally expect journalism at all.

Buzzfeed News has a lot of excellent journalism. Even in its non US editions, like India for example. They cover a lot of important stories that the mainstream outlets refuse to touch.

Like other comments have already mentioned Buzzfeed (not Buzzfeed News) is the low effort listicle / clickbait part of the business which is unfortunately better known (mostly for pioneering the entire "10 things... you won't believe number 7" genre)

Buzzfeed News has been doing good stuff for a long time.

Their money-making model is that the low-effort listicles pay for the real journalists.

Buzzfeed News does good work.

Admittedly I have a moment of cognitive dissonance every time I see the word Buzzfeed in Buzzfeed News.

buzzfeednews and buzzfeed are not the same thing.