

Nonetheless, it’s pretty common for news sources.
E.g.:
- Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/minot-city-north-dakota-ground-squirrels-dde22d2fa10140191a168687a5aa4daa
- Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/technology/intels-new-ceo-plots-overhaul-manufacturing-ai-operations-2025-03-17/
- ABC (Australia) you already saw
- BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwqewyrw57o
- CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/carney-first-nations-summit-c5-1.7586758
- Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/17/europe-assumes-financial-burden-of-ukraine-war-alarming-russia
All use this style of paragraphs. It’s not universal but I’m surprised that it’s surprising anybody!
The short paragraphs thing predates smartphones and the collapse of print newspapers (here’s a paper from 1996 that does it), so fwiw I don’t think it’s that. I assume it’s some sort of stylistic / presentation thing that’s just normalized in news reporting. Maybe it’s an outdated holdover from print media somehow (where presumably more spacing = more expensive, so it presumably wasn’t a financial motivation) but I think orgs would’ve moved on by now if it was purely done for unnecessary legacy reasons.