Sorry, I'm not looking for an argument and I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. My original post was badly written and overly argumentative, I think I was in a bad mood and a couple of your points just set off my usual UX'y triggers, I apologise.
You're right that I made the leap from your dislike of the top nav/footer to a dislike of scrolling/desire for 'information density'. Those things are often associated but I was wrong to make that leap. Again, my bad.
I disagree with your points that the header and footer are distracting and detract from the articles, that's it and that's all my original post should have said.