Okay, just getting this out there:
I do not envy journalists anymore. Not one bit.
I’m sure it gets easier the more you do it, but I tried to write a fictional article for Everything Falls Apart and discovered that writing one following the styles set out for pieces of journalism breaks almost every single habit and rule of writing for poetry or fiction. Or even technical papers (which is part of my day job).
It took me four hours to write <500 words, with multitudes of rewrites as I discovered in editing that I had slipped into the habits formed by writing fiction.
My respect for copy-editors and journalists has gone upwards by a significant degree. It takes an entirely different mindset (for weak-minded me) to do what they do. And how!
And — to be 100% transparent about the process — I suspect there are still places that it could be fine-tuned in the article.
So, hats off to those folks. Their job is not a clear cut nor as easy as they make it look.