I actually said this in my deleted comment to this article: But I felt like it was too ranty so I deleted it. Personally, I think reddit's death is because of shit like /r/news, or the constant abuses of moderators and the constant lack of attempts by admins to rein in their controls by some manner to reduce undue censorship. Users are leaving to sites that they don't have some all-powerful person over their heads that can remove them from the space in which all or speaking, or where a small group of squatters can kill a community of a hundred thousand. As well, many people seek a "smaller" or more personal experience with their content. This is one of such sites, voat is another.
That executive director failed because he thought he was smarter than the website, thought he knew better, thought reddit's userbase belonged to him.