> In our age of short time spans and competition for attention you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point,

There are terse news outlets, but news magazines whole reason for existence, from the beginning, is providing deeper, more complete coverage of fewer stories than “short-deadline, break-it-first” media like TV and newspapers.

More flowery, yes. Deeper and more complete? I didn't notice that.

> you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point, I would even say, lapidary. But for some reason they became an outlet for graphomania?

Some people enjoy reading.

Have you considered reddit? Or possibly 9gag?

Reddit is just a link aggregator and 9gag is just an entertainment site.

Sooooooo much whining and complaining about the length of the article in this comment thread. You realize you paid absolutely nothing to read it right? That the author is under no obligation to you to provide a "tldr;" for the people who think they're so busy they can't take 15 minutes to read a well-crafted and interesting story about a hustler and the guy trying to catch him.

Seriously, if your attention span is too short to read a medium-length article then you should really self-reflect about what's going on in your life.

I'm not sure why this appears to be a personal attack thing for you. I totally agree with the other commenter on this, 99% of the time when I see an article that is super long and takes a long time to get to the point I'll just click off. The fact is that it just doesn't matter or affect me enough to invest more than a minute or two reading it. In written form I prefer just getting the facts, not a short story. For longer stuff I prefer listening so I can go on a walk or do other things while taking in the (not really useful to me, but interesting) information, like a podcast format.

You may prefer the opposite, and thats OK too. It doesn't necessarily mean there is anything to significant reflect on in either of our lives. Or that one of us has the 'wrong' preference.