"The real losers are the employees," fourteen paragraphs in.
O that more writers would rediscover the format of the inverted pyramid (think news stories, lead first).
Instead so many are following the format of: dump to paper the entire warm-up process. This warm-up is often necessary. It's fine to even write it in your first draft. Before publication, excise the long intro.
Inverted pyramid was specifically "designed" for print so that a news story could be cut at a more or less arbitrary point to fit in a hole of a particular size. It's not a universal writing formula.
(That said, I agree that introductions in a more magazine-style story can ramble and can benefit from having all the "throat clearing"--as an editor of mine used to call it--being cut or pared down significantly.)
stats on online reading suggest that the inverted pyramid is even more essential here than for print, as everyone makes their own decision when to close a tab, and vanishingly few read the full piece most of the time.
FWIW, I agree that this piece went on about various aspects of Theranos for way too long before getting to the meat of the piece.
That said, the purpose of a piece of writing isn't necessarily to communicate a list of increasingly less important facts--which is what fits best with inverted pyramid. Different people have different preferences. I'm not necessarily writing things to maximize eyeballs on the first and second paragraph.
Have you ever noticed that working on an ultra-cool product that goes bust won't cut you any slack. You get more credits for minor contributions to known brands than massive contributions to busted products.
Your skills are tied to your product's PR (apparently).
Well I mean the site the was fundamentally unusable. It's not surprising that advertising his role (whether related to the myriad problems it had or not) didn't help his career much.
In the specific case of Theranos I'd agree, but almost everywhere else it's exactly the opposite. If a company's services are irreplaceable they likely wouldn't be going out of business, so going out of business means there are better alternatives.
Again Theranos is unique: The product they served may have costed customers dearly either financially or worse.
O that more writers would rediscover the format of the inverted pyramid (think news stories, lead first).
Instead so many are following the format of: dump to paper the entire warm-up process. This warm-up is often necessary. It's fine to even write it in your first draft. Before publication, excise the long intro.