The point — or rather the pointlessness — of wasting time and space on news that could be told in a couple of sentences was driven home by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist James Stewart in his 1998 book “Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction.” Stewart made what on the face of it seems a blindingly obvious point: If you can tell the story in a headline and subhead, why torture the reader with dragging it out for 5,000 words?
