I now read articles by skipping paragraphs 1 & 2, skimming 3, 4 & 5 for the scraps of necessary intro, reading 6 & 7 for the actual (hopefully) new information, and maybe skim the rest for the odd nugget that fell through. I can sorta see the value of the fluff when looking at an article in a vacuum, but it is plain annoying when so many articles are written this way.