They did just win a pullitzer for their international reporting last year. I'd say that goes quite a way towards improving their reputation.
That being said, their reputation as "Buzzfeed" is bad, if you repeat a piece of information to someone and say that you "read it on Buzzfeed", there will be an inherent bias that the source is bad, because most people associate them with terrible pop-culture articles on Facebook and don't even know that they won a pullitzer prize.
In that context, their reputation is permanently damaged for most people. If Buzzfeed really want to create "serious" news branch they'd have to call it something else at the very least.
I rank BuzzFeed on the same level as the Huffington Post. You want real news? Go to the Associated Press directly, or Reuters.
NYT can be ok, but their monetization tactics are kind of weird