It is newsworthy. We generated fusion be shining light at molecules, which never has been done before. Aside from that, if you read the article you became slightly more science literate.
Fusion with laser has been done before, by the same team. The difference is that they improve the experiment and this time they get ~50% more energy. Or if you evaluate it in other words, the efficiency improve from ~0.6% to 1%, or less depending on what do you define by input energy. More details in other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227620