Anyone else do this? What's your excuse?
Sometimes, I'll get to the comments of what looks to be an interesting article and see discussion about how the article is crap or misleading. This saves me from wasting my time.
The raw nature of individuals discussing their experience, opinions, and knowledge of a particular topic is always more informative and interesting than an article, which needs to stay on topic and have a theme and an ending.
Often, yes. Somewhat depends on how interested I am in the actual article. As strange as it may seem, I might spent 5 minutes reading comments to see if it's worth spending 2 minutes to read the article :)
Additionally, there is generally not a whole lot of truly "breaking" news out there. Instead, it's a lot of rehashing of basic stories, concepts, etc. I consume news from a number of sources, so often times the submission headline + comments gives me enough information to supplement what I already have.
Pre-reading comments can offer valuable perspective that is good to have read BEFORE reading the actual article also.
Often, the discussion of submissions can be more enjoyable than what I've just read, and in some cases, more accurate, and have more depth of information.