When I hear or read the word, stream, first of all I think of a fast flowing, rather narrow, fresh water river. So these word associations fit rather nicely when we talk about something that is constantly moving, and always renewing itself (fresh).
If I am sick in hospital I can say: I had a constant stream of visitors.
An online newspaper website will provide: a stream of news articles.
A 24 hours news programme will boast: Live stream coverage from ABC News
Flow on the other hand, usually describes how liquid runs continuously in one direction, its meaning is quite similar to (a) stream but it lacks the idea of being constantly updated; fresh and new. It is however, in my opinion, more versatile.
Flow is normally collocated with hair, liquids, rivers, alcohol, words (written and spoken), ideas, traffic and information:
Her long black hair flowed past her shoulders
Champagne flowed freely all evening.
"... he spoke in a rich bass voice, with an easy flow of language.."
Ideas flowed from her pen
Traffic is flowing freely on the motorway tonight
A constant flow of information.
There are many other collocations with flow which you will find in any good dictionary. Some you may be able to substitute with the noun or adjective "stream" for example, information, others much less so.
The New York Times article from which you quoted offers several examples and a definition:
Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right?
What the writer is saying is that these so-called "zombie nouns" are overcomplicated and take away from language (in the writer's opinion). They specifically focus on the fact that they take away from verb usage. Another example from that article:
Zombie nouns do their worst damage when they gather in jargon-generating packs and infect every noun, verb and adjective in sight: globe becomes global becomes globalize becomes globalization. The grandfather of all nominalizations, antidisestablishmentarianism, potentially contains at least two verbs, three adjectives and six other nouns.
Best Answer
They are called anthroponyms.