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).
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.
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?
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