It's worth noting that this is such an old problem that traditional news-writing styles incorporate a solution: they require that the author cram the most important info into the first few sentences, then expand on it for the rest of the article.

I'm not sure how well it's followed these days, and I'm sure that few places other than very traditional news publishers enforce it at all. Old archival newspapers (think 19th and early 20th century) tend to be entirely in this style, though.