[dan-robertson]

It’s reasonable to have short articles in a newspaper, where you want to fit in a bunch of short factual stories, or on a newswire where you just want to quickly send out some facts before competitors. In the former case you just put lots of stories on one page. In the latter case, it’s often expected to be short.

[kevincox]

I think short articles are great! But it is crazy how much crap gets added to nice short articles on most sites.

[tachyonbeam]

I guess a lot of the BS filler text is added just so they can fit more ads around the text, huh? The goal for online publications isn't to inform you and save you time... It's to make you click on ads. They want to have you see as many ads as possible, and make sure that you stay on the page as long as possible. If the news article was just a one-paragraph snippet, you couldn't fit 8 ads on the page, it would look absolutely laughable.

[ljm]

A newspaper or news website would source most of their journalism from Reuters or Associated Press, and then fluff it up to fit their editorial stance.

The same articles would seem longer in print because they're formatted in such narrow columns, wrapping around images. There's some thought that goes into the layout.

Of course, the internet breaks that particular illusion. And I'm sure that if a marketing department could do to their printed paper what they do to their website, design and readability be damned, they would jump at the chance.