A few things to consider when you criticize “traditional” media.

First, many of the major newspapers are top-heavy with highly paid management, management that has stayed with the company for years, if not decades. There’s an “old boys (and it’s almost always men here) club” (and this applies to many large companies, not just media ones) where they all scratch each others’ backs to keep their power and pay.

Many of these media companies whined to no avail about how the “Internet” was killing their business model, yet they refused to change with the times. As a result 2 things happened. They kept advertising rates high, so advertisers moved to different media. They raised per-issue prices, which not only priced out subscribers, it made single-issue purchases no longer an impulse buy. This latter drove down paid readership dramatically. Econ 101 at work.

I think your example is actually one of the better online newspapers. There’s LOTS of content “above the fold” and very little in gratuitous graphics. I don’t know how many of these link to substantive content, vs. the sadly ubiquitous and usually content-light listicles, but this layout is very scannable.

One of the biggest problems with media websites is that they are sold a bill of goods by a few CMS (content management systems) builders. The end user experience (the readers) of many of the CMSs I’ve encountered is just plain terrible. I can’t imaging the production workflow is any better. I’m guessing that these CMSs are being sold on the executive level with lots of pretty pictures and bullet points to people who have no clue about best practices for content creation, newsgathering, or end user experience.

Having worked in “the media,” (small newspapers, long ago), and although I never took a formal journalism class, I still understand the importance of the “traditional” newsgathering process. That process includes verifying and validating facts presented in stories before publication. This takes time (and money), and is in direct opposition to today’s “I want it now” society. (It’s not so much different here in Silicon Valley, where “fail faster” has replaced “do it right” as the mantra.) And I admit, when I hear news, I want to know as much as I can as soon as I can. But I also want to get the news right, and if that means sacrificing being first, I’ll take that. We need to promote the idea that correct is orders of magnitude better than first.