Hmm. I'm going to disagree with that! I think "candid, engineering-style blogposts" are and will continue to be great for an engineering audience, but I'm very skeptical that they will be great for a wide audience. For instance, I read and was fascinated by the YouTube kids post, but I do not know anyone outside of the tech industry that read it. And you're wrong to say he reported it way before, the NYT published this two days previous:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-ki...

and Birdle's post itself links to reporting by New York Magazine from 2016. I don't dispute that his post goes into more detail, I just dispute that longer automatically equals better. Someone with domain knowledge reporting a story in great depth and a major publication reporting a simplified version for mass consumption is certainly not a new model.

I'd also strongly disagree that NYT is an ageing institution unable to adapt to this modern tech reality. John Herrman writes some of the most perceptive pieces about the state of tech out there:

https://www.nytimes.com/by/john-herrman

(and a minor quibble: I don't think the post linked here and the Youtube Kids post are in any way comparable. The engineering writeup is not news in any way, shape or form, it's just a guide to how NYT implemented something)