My post presenting data showing that major newspapers drastically cut back their longform story output in the last decade generated a pretty big response, as these things go.
It also generated a bit of offline buzz around newsrooms, too, I’m told.
That’s all to the good.
The overwhelming number of people who cared to weigh in on Twitter just RT’d the post along, sometimes adding a comment expressing dismay: “#Sad” or “Such a shame” or just “Yikes.”
The post also generated a fair measure of hostility, too, which some may find puzzling.
First, there has to be the obligatory misreading of my point—
“Length is now how journalists should be measuring their value” is what I’m said to have said. Of course, the post *actually* says: “No one equates story-length with quality.” And you can’t blame the length of the post for missing that. It’s the opening line.
Jeff Jarvis also protests: “Newspaper length as a metric is often a proxy for ego, bad editing, and wasting readers’ time.”
Okay. But if the complaint is about the use of story length as a metric, I say that since everything about journalism these days is measured to within an inch of its life, quantifying story length is obviously fair game. There is power in measurement, as we learn. And those numbers really were shocking.
And if the problem is that longform itself is often a proxy for “ego, bad editing, and wasting readers’ time,” you can say that about any form, starting with Twitter.
What I find strange is that longform itself, after all these years, must still justify itself as a form. Not this good story or that boring one. But the form itself. Why? It’s another tool. Some of us believe it’s journalism’s most powerful one.
Now, I’m happy to welcome any new tool that’s useful. Hail, Twitter. Long live Big Data. So why is this one particular tool, especially one with such a storied record, forever in the dock?
Mark Armstrong makes some constructive points, including:
Dean Starkman’s piece feels oddly timed, especially when you think about the number of outstanding stories being shared in the Longreads community every day and the popularity of long-form content in Pocket …
4. Even if newspapers are cutting their long-form content, it’s a missed opportunity, because they’d be the only ones doing so. Online publishers like Deadspin, The Awl and The Verge and niche magazine publishers are only deepening their commitment to this storytelling.
Indeed. And this is great. More cultural production is generally better.
But the thing I think about is that the major newspapers could and did create longform on an industrial scale. Put it this way, the four big papers I cited produced a combined 3,592 fewer stories over 2000 words last year than in 2003. What’d we miss? We’ll never know. The extent to which digital outlets’ growth offsets legacy decline is a good thing. But I’d like to see the data on that. I’d add that the issue obviously goes well beyond the sheer quantity of longform produced. I make the case, for instance, for the importance of big journalism institutions here.
But I really liked this exchange between Armstrong and other notables, and agree with basically everything in it:
As a reporter who regularly writes long, but seldom 2,000 words long, nothing about the findings of your informal survey or the response surprises me.
Since USA Today started and since newspapers' circulation started to capsize in the 1980s, story length has been a whipping boy and often a scapegoat for the industry's problems. Editors over and over have tried to cut story lengths as a way of luring more reader interest and the track record of that strategy can only be seen in the continued declines in paid circulation at most dailies.
Obviously, long, rambling, poorly edited stories don't belong in the paper. But is the content of the WSJ, Washington Post and LA Times any better today now that the stories have been shaved? And if so, by what standard?
Is there any link between story lengths and circulation? WSJ's rose after Murdoch arrived. But was it the shorter stories that made the difference, or the switch to a general interest format?
Those are the kinds of studies I'd like to read.
#1 Posted by Tony Davis, CJR on Tue 22 Jan 2013 at 11:36 AM
The antipathy some have for the longform article is that it was often overdone in the past, long just for the sake of being long. Obviously, there are articles that demand exposition, so nobody is going to deny that there is a niche for longform. But perhaps there just isn't much of an audience for it, perhaps so much longform was just journalists being elitist, as Murdoch always says, and most readers don't miss it. It's also possible that longform has migrated online, to long blog posts, and to certain publications like the NYT, which you note has increased its 3000-word article output.
As for asking for "the data" that "digital outlets’ growth offsets legacy decline," as if there could be such a thing. The whole point is that there are thousands of "digital outlets," if you include bloggers, so you can't just do a simplistic analysis of such a huge data set, as you did by using a couple big newspapers. I agree with you that we need people getting paid to do investigative journalism, but I completely disagree that "big journalism" needs to be kept on life support to provide it. If there's an audience for it, they will pay for such work online. If not, it will disappear. I'm fairly certain investigative journalism will thrive online, and I'm sure all the current media institutions will die off.
#2 Posted by Ajay, CJR on Tue 22 Jan 2013 at 02:58 PM
I think focusing of length misses the point. Reduced story length simply a symptom of the real problem, which is a perception that the public can't handle issues that are complicated or have depth and nuance. So only stories that are simple and easy to understand are covered, or worse, complicated stories are caricatured or beat into familiar, probably inappropriate narratives.
#3 Posted by lopqoob, CJR on Tue 22 Jan 2013 at 05:01 PM
ha ha ha ha ha! "Jeff Jarvis"
#4 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Wed 23 Jan 2013 at 04:27 PM
All you Longformers are living the past. If you can't tell a story in 200 words, forget it, it's boring and I have other things to do.
And all you tweeters: Why do you need 140 characters -- 140! -- to express a thought? I get bored after 100 characters -- triple digits! (Yawn).
Any story worth being told (or sold) can be expressed in fewer than 10 characters.
For instance I read a great, thoughtful, powerful, illuminating, well-reported story recently that read in full: "Beyonce." It had all the nuance and subtext and storytelling anyone could ever need. (I thought the followup, which read "Beyonce!" went on a bit too long. Some writers are such prima donnas).
Here are the full texts of some of my other favorite stories recently:
"Implant"
"Clone"
"LIBOR" (an investigative piece)
"Lip-Sync"
"Israel"
"Planking"
"OMG!"
"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (see, I can go for the occasional longform piece, as long as it's within reason)
"Christmas Sweater" (Touching. I laughed, I cried)
"Project Runway"
"Genocide"
#5 Posted by mwh, CJR on Wed 23 Jan 2013 at 07:21 PM