I don't think it's tangential at all – tools are meant to be used by people, and thinking about how to make tools low-friction and easy-to-use is intrinsically

I don't think it's tangential at all – tools are meant to be used by people, and thinking about how to make tools low-friction and easy-to-use is intrinsically interesting, regardless or not of whether it's meaningfully actionable :) But only the authors would know what's feasible for them. I can only imagine that working at a legacy newspaper is a resource-strapped place for software engineering.