Interesting that you put slideshows firmly in the “bad” column, as if they are, were, and will always be, a masquerade for pageviews. It’s possible to make slideshows that are honest and don’t suck, and for goals beyond raw pageviews. It’s one thing to decide “that’s not going to be part of our news organization, for x, y, z” — it’s another to implicitly say that slideshows are fundamentally grimy. “Slideshow” encompasses a range of styles and tendencies.