Articles are getting too long? Since when has this been a problem? I think it's the amount of crap ads injected while I'm trying to read the article that is the main problem.
It's not actually a direct correlation, but enough people take that as gospel that they will pad out an article to make it super long just for the SEO value.
Similar to recipe websites giving their entire life story before a recipe.
Ironically Google is the main cause of articles getting really long and full of fluff.