I am not certain how it is now (AI and all), but I have seen that it was precisely a word length requirement for article assignments in the past where ad revenue was increased through page views.

I think it has been a consequence of responding incorrectly to the digitization pressures due to a word inflating culture of verbosity in at least the American education system, where the “quality” of academic output is largely measured in quantity, i.e., an x page or y word length requirement. There is actually also a physical manifestation of that effect in the physical size of our education textbooks.

In Europe, the textbooks that at least used to be used (in a bit out of that phase of life) were very high information density and very compact books to facilitate transporting them, probably also largely due to utilitarian concerns since people didn’t and still do not drive everywhere as much. When I first ever came in contact with American textbooks, I was extremely shocked and surprised at just how utterly hollow and voluminous and heavy they were, page after page of concepts that would have been stated in a single sentence, if not a clause, in a European textbook of 1/10 the size and a 1/4 the cost. I cannot ignore the sense that this culture/system that took hold in America at some point is a heavy contributor to the reason we have arrived at this point that produces such a foam article.

All that lends itself to this kind of fuzzy fluff that looks impressive in a culture where we know that the vast majority of people only read headlines and the opening at best and digital words are cheap to “print”, which serves ad revenue and image/identity brand management purposes, i.e., the economist is still a venerated outlet, because “it has big impressive looking articles so I must be important and smart for reading the headlines”.

In contrast, in a world where paper is expensive and so is printing and distribution, and the primary source of information exchange is reading, not ADD attracting TikTok shorts, the incentive is article density to pack as much information as possible into expensive print real estate to produce actual value that someone is willing to pay for with expensive, un-inflated money.

What you “can’t stand” is actually an effect of the degradation of our civilization as a function of technological development and offsetting all our human reason for being, the very need for humanity in the function of life for the ruling class.

Frankly, I don’t see journalists and journalism, or the written word, for that matter (somewhat ironically), surviving this latest technological onslaught of AI precisely because at some point the current low grade state of journalism can easily be replaced by AI and I do not see a path for journalism to recover from the grave it is already in. Even if someone were to start re-adopting high grade, high information density writing styles; it would be done in a void in an ever degrading readership quality environment as the general education level of our societies degrades into the “communist” uniformly gray mush without distinction that comes from normalization. It is a classic negative feedback loop for humanity in general from here on out; not to be confused with the feedback loop for technology or the ruling class.