It's essentially long form journalism. Here's the format

Some question that has a 10 word answer?

Meandering table-setting descriptions. The hustle of the author landing early at the airport and what their driver looked like on their ride into town.

Irrelevant backstory about the location, maybe some aside about some eccentric character who lived there 100 years ago. Where the author went for lunch and why they picked that restaurant.

Central characters introduced with superfluous descriptions of how they were dressed that day, styled their hair and carry themselves when they walk. Also what they ordered and how much they ate of it.

Something adjacent to the 10 word question

More table setting meandering.

Background character introduction

Irrelevant details

Speculation

ANSWER TO QUESTION

Editorializing

Description of main character family

What their neighbors look like

How the character's family and neighbors feel about the work

...

It's disingenuous. Maybe they're trying to get the article to "perform well" and they're trying to maximize for something? I don't know. It's like back when local news gave sizzlers and then teased out their audience over 2 hours before sidecaring the answer in the closing credits.

As it turns out I don't care about the temperament of the office dog or what kind of fern was in the reception area. I especially don't want 4 paragraphs on each.

Hunter S Thompson did this and it was great. Most people are not Hunter S Thompson. In fact I'm pretty sure that number is all humans who ever existed - 1.

These days I will scroll for a bit and then just close it. If it's from the serial offenders like The Atlantic, I don't even click. I think it has that name because I'd have to be stranded in the middle of the Atlantic to actually have the patience to put up with it

Oh man, I can't stand it. It's almost a parody at this point, and indeed the Atlantic is the absolute worst. Nowadays I typically scroll the first second for the scroll-bar to pop-up, I then assess whether it's short or long-form. If the scrollbar indicates it's 20 pages I typically scroll down somewhere and read a paragraph, if I see them discussing some ostensible link between the soft fabric of the office's carpet and the management style of its CEO, I just move on.

That having been said, I thought this article was quite good. It explained the basics of battery tech, what we have now, what's being worked on, with the hook of the fruit. That may not have been entirely fair to the reader but I didn't feel tricked. The article (while quite basic) gives a decent introduction into batteries and never went into any of the issues you so aptly mentioned, like what central characters were dressed like and what they ate for lunch (which I've seen too many times to not be a joke at this point).

It’s clearly just an outlet for people who wanted to become writers, but only had enough talent to manage becoming a journalist. I personally can’t stand it. The topic might be interesting, but the journalists prose isn’t.

I'm totally fine with story telling, but not in that context, it's not the place.

Or if you're going to, put the relevant stuff in the lede and then go into the narrative form. Just don't scatter and hide the meat and force the reader to go easter egg hunting.

Doing so might be good or bad story telling, I don't pretend to be an expert there, but it's certainly bad journalism.

That’s the point. If they had to market their creative writing on its own merit, nobody would read it. But here they’ve managed to bait several people ITT into reading it by lying about it being an article on a topic they were interested in.

The inverted pyramid is dead. Long live the advertizement industry.

That's BBC for you: Its relevance lies in its irrelevance.

This isn't a challenge but just a request to be educated.

Can you show me an example? I had always considered the BBC (I'm in the US so I get the world service) to be pretty decent. Is there some terrible side I don't see?

This isn't because of the writing though. The whole article, start to finish, is about alternatives to lithium ion batteries, of which a derivative of durian is an option. Judging by the URL (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200724-the-battery-made...), BBC tried several titles until they found the one that got the most clicks. I don't think the author would have picked the current title if they had the choice.

I have been wondering about this for now close to a decade.

Why aren't there any news that are a list of bullet points?

Why do they not tell me a list of known unknowns in FAQ like section? If bullet point were the answer to everything we know about this news, then FAQ would list out things that you might ask but we dont know yet. I thought this was the most important section because first and foremost people dont ask questions. And even if they had questions their brains fill it out with assumptions which could easily be mislead by the bullet point. By explicitly telling them what we dont know ( yet ) helps to give a clearer picture.

Basically I want shit loads of signals and less noise.

Axios uses this format, where they have a short summary and bullet points. Here's an example: https://www.axios.com/tropical-storm-henri-slams-new-england...

Thanks!.

Agreed; It’s misleading if that’s not the topic of the article. Here is the relevant section…

Super fruit

One innovative group are not only trying to find new ways to power our devices, but also tackle the issue of food waste at the same time. Vincent Gomes, a chemical engineer at the University of Sydney, and his team, including Labna Shabnam, are turning waste from the world’s smelliest fruit, durian, and the world’s largest fruit, jackfruit, into a supercapacitor that can charge mobile phones, tablets and laptops within minutes. …

I doubt the title was chosen by the author; somewhere like BBC the editor will often throw out the original title because it's not 'intruiging' enough.

Same. I figured it was Durian, and expected it to get into details of what's new. Instead the first half just told me about li ion batteries, and didn't hold my attention.

I find BBC especially affected by this behaviour, and also choosing ambitious click bait headlines.

This is what happens when variants are tested and the conclusion is that clickbait is what works. Moreover, not only that clickbait works, but that is necessary.