Each print medium has it's own style, and that style has evolved to
fit the reading style of those who read it. Newspapers get to the point
quickly, academic journals are heavily footnoted, magazines for the dentist's
office contain lots of short items. Serialized novels in 19th century newspapers
developed a style that maintained reader interest and ensured that they'd
purchase the next edition of the paper. In this respect the web is no different,
except perhaps that people writing for the web still haven't fully understood
and internalized how people read web documents.