Jeri said, in passing:

There's also the unimportant communication that involves a writer wanting to tell me something and being completely competent, but I don't want to read it. From the reader's point of view, it may be good writing, but it doesn't matter. From a writer or an editor's point of view, is it good writing if most people don't want to read it? The writer's communicating his little butt off, but that doesn't matter. There is something needed beyond communication.

Seems to me that communication is not a one-way street. If the writer gives you a long paragraph (or even a whole article) of inconsequentials, and loses you as a result, there is no communication. In that case the writer put a lot of stuff down, but he's not "communicating his little butt off", to use your enchanting phrase. As a parallel, take a schoolteacher who knows his subject, organizes it well, but fails to motivate the class to pay attention: No learning is going to occur.

Dave Oesterreich