I think they found out in-depth longread type articles don't guarantee a consistent readership. It's possible to pull off if it's a once a week or twice a week kind of thing, but they were trying to do it as their main content source.

I dunno what happened with Ben - he was pretty enjoyable to read back at Ars Technica, but in the meantime has become downright obnoxious.

Ars had good editors.