Oh, OK, sorry, I was confused by the mention of Ancestry etc, because I didn’t realise they compiled data into reports. I’ve used FMP and Ancestry for research only but I’m writing my findings up as I go.
My research began with a longstanding dead end in the family tree, so I've written about that family member and the various rumours. Then I moved on to what was known, and researched back and around those people, taking a section of the tree at a time and drawing that out longhand. My ‘master’ tree is the size of my kitchen table but I also have separate sheets for specific areas that have become very detailed. Every time I found someone a bit interesting (and 'interesting' is very relative term here - no one is famous but people had jobs, for instance, that I knew nothing about because time has made them obsolete, or they came from a particular place that's interesting, or something in the paper trail suggested an unusual event in the family) I've stopped and written about that. Every so often I revisited the dead end and made progress piecemeal, and I'm writing about that process too because it’s taken a fair bit of sleuthing.
Overall, what I found was that social history comes very much more alive when it's your ancestors and you have a personal investment, so I found myself becoming interested in, for instance, the gradual migration over several generations from rural to urban living and so I’m writing about that, even though I'd never previously thought about it very much. Because you have inside knowledge of your own family (decisions, events etc) you have a privileged view of how external events or trends affected people's individual experiences, which (to me at least) is a really fascinating relationship.
One thing I've definitely found, though, is that most people don't find the nuts and bolts of genealogy very interesting. I've tried talking about my research to a few friends and people glaze over so fast it's actually quite funny. All anyone wants to know is 'how far back did you get'. Even when it's your own tree it can be hard to sustain interest in dry facts. For instance, I've come across a few family websites where people have written up things that have been invaluable in research terms (e.g. gravestone inscriptions that I would never have found elsewhere) but are virtually unreadable as a prose narrative. It's a bit like those passages in the Bible where Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat...etc.
So I'm taking the view that all the names, dates and facts, while important, are secondary to the need to spin a bit of a yarn to bring the people alive. It depends on the purpose of the write-up and who will be reading though.