I've noticed that too and also do not like it.

I'd prefer the traditional style article and thumbnails where necessary (not just for the sake of cramming images into articles).

Maybe they've done testing and this style article gets read/shared more, it certainly looks more official and permanent but it's still just a blog post / news article.

This is where I first saw it, and it's annoying to read the huge text and adjust to the images that float under text: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16... Apparently they never even considered what it would look like when someone tries to print that article, the 1st half of the page is a solid black image, then the text is laughably large.