However common it is, these days, for journalists to start sentences with the word, ‘but’, it is not correct to do so and can be very irritating to the reader. Even if the word is mid-sentence, it is often overused, leaving the reader wondering if anything in the story is as it seems.

Too often, people place commas before a ‘but’ instead of after it. Always consider how a sentence would read, when a clause is enclosed by commas, if everything between the commas were to be deleted.
“He wanted to go out, but as it rained, he could not.”
“He wanted to go out he could not.”
In this case the comma should be after the ‘but’ as follows:
“He wanted to go out but, as it rained, he could not.”
“He wanted to go out but he could not.” … It still makes sense.