TLDR: in the user's eyes, a newspaper and this sort of layout are not very different, if the average user can navigate the former for hundreds of years, they can navigate the latter.
Ok, but the fact of the matter is that a digital display rendering a webpage and a physical format of a newspaper are fundamentally different media and should be treated as such. A wall of text isn't fundamentally a bad thing, but on a display monitor (or god help you, a cellphone or tablet) that's a terrible user experience.
Someone else said the same thing which I addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46331586#46334242
TLDR: in the user's eyes, a newspaper and this sort of layout are not very different, if the average user can navigate the former for hundreds of years, they can navigate the latter.
Ok, but the fact of the matter is that a digital display rendering a webpage and a physical format of a newspaper are fundamentally different media and should be treated as such. A wall of text isn't fundamentally a bad thing, but on a display monitor (or god help you, a cellphone or tablet) that's a terrible user experience.
Sure, you can treat them differently, but for certain use cases and layouts, you can treat them the same. It all depends on what you're trying to do.