Author here. Interesting take on the article.
A few things:
'Clickbait'. Yeah, sure. That's the point of writing online articles - to generate website traffic. The point of a headline and subheader are to ensure that people find them interesting enough to click on, while also maintaining the factual essence of what the article is about. There's nothing particular inflammatory here: it's an article written by a fan who finds the whole thing about Morrissey's frequent cancellations interesting and worth exploring. A good way to do this is to speak to the fans, who are the ones (apparently from Morrissey himself and his band) who are most affected.
'Nameshaming'. Not at all. The people I spoke to were all asked if they wanted to remain anonymous or not. The ones who did wish to remain anonymous (reasons being that 'there are some twisted fans out there' and 'I don't have time for their drama', incidentally) have clear indications next to their made up names that these names have been changed.
'No substance'. That's interesting. It's a difficult one for writers, particularly when there's a subject that's open to a lot of discussion, but is restricted, as all writing is, to a word count. This one was 650, but I clearly wrote a bit more than that and had to rein myself in as there was a lot more I wanted to say. It's just the nature of online journalism, I'm afraid. People aren't that into reading enormous article, the shorter or snappier/bitesized (think listicles on Buzzfeed and the like) the better. The areas of substance I tried to cover were: physical illness, mental illness and fans' opinions. These are all clearly covered in the article. Sure, there's no obvious conclusion, but that's because this is not a serious, investigative piece - it's a musing on why Morrissey cancels so much and why his fans are still as ardent as always. Another reason for no obvious conclusion is that nobody except Morrissey himself knows why he cancels so much. It's the lack of a genuine/consistent reason that annoys the fans (as stated in the article).
'Smearing his name in the mud'. Not really, I'm afraid. Everything on there is either a fact (the number of tour cancellations was taken from this very website) or an opinion from genuine fans who spend time and (a lot of) money going to see him. I've been cancelled on before, once the day before I was due to fly out to America to see him play, so I can understand the mixed emotions people feel, and thought others would feel the same. Let's be fair, he does and says enough to smear his own name in the mud.
Thanks for reading, though. Everyone will have their own take on it and I appreciate all points of view.