[dimal]

News articles should absolutely be almost JS-free. The current status of news sites is ridiculous. But this page is an interactive visualization, so it makes sense to use JS. The JS debate isn't an all-or-nothing argument. Documents should be documents. Apps should be apps. Interactions that are more complicated than simple documents require some JS.

[TeMPOraL]

Yes, and I think no reasonable person will complain about JS in a document like this:

http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/

or this:

http://worrydream.com/TenBrighterIdeas/

But documents like these aren't commonplace[0]. JS isn't used to enhance documents, it's used to make them much worse - because that degrading of quality and experience is how websites make money.

Apps are obviously a different beast. Most of websites don't need to be or behave like apps though.

[0] - which is a very sad thing; it's exactly the kind of advantage computers have over paper, and it's not being used at all. You either get dumb text that's even less functional than a book (think of articles rendered to image), or wasteful apps with shit-ton of ads and tracking.