BBC news pages don't tend to have long bodies of text though. Even news reports tend to be concise. There's nothing to stop full articles and analyse from columnists being columnar, but imho the news front page could use space more effectively. It's currently just a big list of headlines, and when I go in to a category that interests me (like Tech or Science) ... i just get another list of headlines. How about two columns at least?

I've used Firefox's zoom feature to make it fill the page, and it'd look fine if they did so... you'd just get more on screen.

I can't imagine how the vertical use of space is further burdened for US readers who have ads to contend with.