There are no rules. There’s only what works, and what doesn’t, for each story, or article, or novel.
There are no rules, nonfiction version
Today I’m working on a nonfiction profile. Usually when working on such pieces, I put present-day information on the subject first, and work his or her background in later, towards the end. But for this piece, that didn’t quite work, and I found myself instead summarizing that background in the first paragraph–the fiction equivalent of putting the infodump on page one. Because that’s what this article seems to want. The structure that’s worked for the past 5 or 10 articles doesn’t matter; only the one in hand does.