"Lite" versions of news sites are a smart compromise between two competing forces: the desire to appeal to audiences that are put off by garish, heavyweight sit

"Lite" versions of news sites are a smart compromise between two competing forces: the desire to appeal to audiences that are put off by garish, heavyweight sites, and to do so in a way that doesn't endanger the revenue they get from all the trackers and advertising on their fat sites. By making the text-only version a separate destination, most of their traffic still flows to their multimedia site by default and by habit. The light version is always advertised by them for specific use-cases only: quick access in emergencies and for usage in "emerging markets" (inaccurate marketing-speak for low-bandwidth connections on low-power devices). The market forces behind text-only news sites are not unlike those behind AMP links, Facebook Instant Articles, and the Apple News app. News sites want their news to be read, but not at the cost of not getting paid. It's a difficult problem to solve, and these "secondary" text sites typically get the content in front of the most ad-averse eyeballs anyway, so they're not currently a threat.