Yeah, I don't like it at all either. But I attribute that to the fact that I've read so many stories in that style popping up on HN, NYT, WSJ or Economist. There's probably nothing wrong with that style in itself and it does add a bit of flourish to what might otherwise be a very short article. But it does become grating if you're exposed to articles like it so often that it seems like a rote pattern.

Sometimes when I read reporting like this it makes me think that human language isn't so complex as to be intractable. For all our mastery of the subtleties and nuances of human communication, it appears that (for the most part), our most widely disseminated writing is formulaic and templated. It strikes me that this sort of writing is like the four chords that virtually all popular music is written in.

When you start to see it so often there almost seems to be something sing-songey about this kind of writing. It's not just the narrative structure, use of in media res, or focus on characters instead of facts - it's also the words themselves, which seem to be used to construct a finite number of idioms and phrases arranged in a very usual pattern.

I suppose every sophisticated thing in the world is mundane when you're watched it long enough to see a pattern. TVTropes gives me the same feeling about entertainment. I'm also of the opinion that this style of writing is mostly disagreeable for people who just want the technical content. But to be frank, there are very good periodicals for Quanta Magazine for that kind of purpose. Popular journalism isn't really intended for that.