Related - I really hate how most people write articles. Halfway in and there's still no followup on the statement made by the headline. On top of that the headline is immediately repeated in the text and the premise is then restated several times.
We get the "bizzare rule" answered with the second to last sentence
So, if the informant called 911 instead of Crime Stoppers, they might be unable to make the claim.
This is what the article is about, but you can't get around to it until the very end because the article has to be written like an 8th graders essay
That's definitely a large part of it, but it is also just the US style. I see it much less in non-US publications. It probably has something to do with the US having an abysmal reading level.
It's literally the opposite structure of the journalistic inverted pyramid format. Most relevant sentences go right at the top, further details below. Articles used to be intentionally written so you could stop reading at any point and walk away with most of the information.