In case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article):
I should say, though, that it does mean that the content of that summary, and of the headline, becomes extremely important. For instance, you could nominally cover a news story, but write a boring headline and summary, and very few people will trudge through that to find the really important details later on. You do sometimes find that occurring on the BBC site, especially when it's a story which might raise a lot of controversy within government.
Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.