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This is why modern browsers have a "please format the text I came here to read in a way that I can actually read it" button. It's ironic that online publishers are paying coders to make reading their publications so awful that the companies who write browsers pay other coders to remove the awfulness.

In part because text formatted into many shorter lines is easier to read. The longer the line and the more space you need between lines. This is basic typography [1].

But that doesn't account for the white space on the top. I don't get that in my Firefox but I checked with Chromium and I see it. It's the advertising/social buttons banner. Once again adblockers win the day.

[1] http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text...

The rest of the page is ads. I presume you have adblocker turned on.

And publishers are surprised we use ad blockers...

It's not perfect, but I find most news sites to be more readable after turning off CSS. The text will properly fill your window, and there are no annoying typefaces.

Search for the div with id="cLxocL1WVq1Evp" and set its width to 100% in the CSS. Abracadabra.