I just read unixsheikh's article on how tech news websites today can be overwhelming to the average reader [1]. I've mentioned it on a note a few days ago, but I do think that modern website design have become more about creating eyecandy and great first impressions rather than actually presenting information.
While unixsheikh didn't explicitly mention it, I think that a good contributing factor as to why technology news websites can feel overwhelming that they just have a bad site design. For example, loading the homepage for The Verge will show you how content-lean modern technology news websites have become:
Look at my scrollbar, that's a lot of page space to scroll through and I don't think there's a lot of content down there either.