For what it's worth, the reporter is the a fairly popular author; he wrote "The Psychopath Test" and "So You've Been Publicly Shamed." He writes the you've shown to serve an argument he's making in his books. I wouldn't be surprised if this article is actually a chapter or a passage from an upcoming book of his. He isn't following proper journalistic writing standards, but he also isn't trying to be a journalist. GQ probably wanted to drive readership to their site and their July 2017 issue, so they asked if Ronson had anything in the works and paid him for the rights to publish an excerpt from his manuscript.