Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for.

You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

The answer is exactly that "or" of yours. Informing the reader in an efficient and useful way is a very distant, low-priority goal, and we're all aware of that and yet still somehow pretend journalism is about informing people. It's not anymore.

That said, as I've written before, a lot of longer pieces ramble around and take way too long to get to the heart of the matter. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a short paraphrase whether it's literally an abstract or a bit more of a teaser (especially if the main point really does need some build-up).

I actually agree with your list; I think the inverted pyramid is really about prose construction in an age where print space was at a premium. We can be a lot more free with formatting or redundant information (if it is clearly marked as such) on the web.

I mostly wanted to point out that the concept is not new, but as far as I can tell, it has been pretty much forgotten in most modern web journalism.

What I find is that a lot of information expressed in solid paragraphs becomes a lot easier to parse once you convert them into an appropriate list, tree or graph structure. A surprising amount of the text I've been reading is lists that have some relation ("x is used in x_1,...","x consists of x_1,..."). This ties in to authors deciding to shake things up by adding unnecessary complexity to these simple lists. This kills the reading comprehension.

For example

    K. Merton developed in the 1940s his nor-
    mative framework for the conduct of sci-
    ence based on universalism, communalism,
    disinterestedness, and organized skepticism

     K. Merton developed in 1940s a formative framework of scientific conduct based on:  
     - universalism : <definition of universalism> 
     - communalism 
     - disinterest : <note on disinterest> 
     - organized skepticism : <example of organized skepticism>

Maybe "reading" is a low tech invention that we just don't have the patience for anymore. Instead we want to "explore" a theory or network of statements or social graph.

It's pleasant to click around in Wikipedia and get a sense for how different topics relate, but reading the (often turgid and boring) prose seems like work.

     #BEGIN_GRAPH
     'Paul Graham' founded YC 
     'Sam Altman' leads YC 
     YC funded AirBnB
     YC funded Reddit
     AirBnB <> Accommodation
     #END_GRAPH

      [Paul Graham]----founded----->[YC]------funded----->[AirBnB]<------>[Accommodation]
      [Sam Altman]-----leads------->[  ]            `---->[Reddit]