It may be worth noting that there are historical reasons why newspapers in particular used that format, especially wire copy. The idea was that, in layout, typeset stories could be cut at more or less an arbitrary point. Magazine stories are much less likely to follow this exact format although they still tend not to completely bury the lede.
Cut literally - I worked on a student newspaper (with professional phototypesetting gear, comparable to the city papers - AKI Ultrasystem) and second-tier "filler" content was just set in a single long column, then pasted up on the layout boards (hot wax as the adhesive) and then trimmed when it ran out of space (with an x-acto blade.) Reading that class of content was kind of optional for the layout editor, at least at 10:30pm when trying to get the boards out the door for an 11pm press deadline...
Yeah. I was on a student paper and then actually co-founded one at a different school. At the time I don’t we used wire service copy in either case but you still needed to make stuff fit.
