Dive summary: 

• Many major web publishers are changing their site design to a more photo friendly visual, mimicking social sites like Pinterest. 
• The shift is spurring sites to improve user experience and integrate ads less awkwardly; publishers have realized that big, bold images attract more attention than text. 
• The visual grid design is also easier to reconfigure on mobile devices, a fact that cannot be ignore now that 30-40% of traffic comes from a mobile device. 

From the article: 

"Another design trend that stems from this less cluttered approach is making it easy for readers to get to the next story or find content within the site without having to click. Quartz, which looks more like an app than a typical content site, is the poster child for this approach. The endless experience pushes the user from one article to the next. There is no homepage; there is no main navigation, just trending topics and a table of contents on the left with tools to help the reader."