I was raised on the inverted pyramid, too, and like it. However, the benefit of easy scanning was secondary to its main design driver, manual (and literal) cut

I was raised on the inverted pyramid, too, and like it. However, the benefit of easy scanning was secondary to its main design driver, manual (and literal) cut and past. They needed to guarantee that they could cut a story basically anywhere to fit the layout, and the continuation would be on a different page, with more ads. The “internet ramble” is also designed with ad revenue in mind; the reader has to read and scroll through ads to get to the part they actually care about. Its indulgent meandering is maddening, and degrades journalism and storytelling.