Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not reconciled, it's just garbage reporting. The 'area theorem' they are referring to was by Bekenstein and others, not Hawking. It's basically the equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics for black holes (dA/dt>=0 instead of dS/dt>=0). Hawking's insight was that this formula was wrong and the area could decrease due to radiation.
It is a pity about the reporting. But it is a fascinating area of research. I never expected that we could measure gravitational waves in our life time.
I mean I'm no astrophysicist, I like the "pop sci" bits, but when I look closer I'm seeing a lot of small numbers and statistics that imply something - e.g. exoplanets based on minute wobbles and brightness variations, water on said exoplanets based on spectrography. It's theories based on tiny but statistically significant data.
The pop sci then comes in and makes statements like "second Earth found!11", which is like, whoa hold on, when you look closer all they found is a wobble or dimness variation that kind of implies there might be a planet at a certain distance from its host star.
Anyway I don't dispute the findings or that there are exoplanets or whatever, I'm just impressed that they are able to make confident claims on what little information we can receive from here.