Related to unnecessary words inside a newspaper/magazine article, this interview [1] with Georges Simenon is the best example of why those articles look like crap (at least for people like me, I do realize that there are other people with different tastes):

> Just one piece of general advice from a writer has been very useful to me. It was from Colette. I was writing short stories for Le Matin, and Colette was literary editor at that time. I remember I gave her two short stories and she returned them and I tried again and tried again. Finally she said, “Look, it is too literary, always too literary.” So I followed her advice. It’s what I do when I write, the main job when I rewrite

> I: What do you cut out, certain kinds of words?

> Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5020/the-art-of-fi...