Longreads is increasing reporting | Hacker News Reader

Longreads is increasing reporting

niemanlab.org

58 pointsbootload13 comments

I like the idea of so-called "long reads" but generally hate the execution. There's a standard longform template I can't stand:

1) Personal anecdote from the author

2) Description of what the weather is like outside the diner where they're meeting for an interview

3) What the two people ordered for dinner, with a long description of how they stir their coffee

4) Excerpts from the middle of the interview which are meaningless out of context

5) Another anecdote

6) Jump-cut to something tangentially related on the other side of the country

7) Back to the original interview

8) THE LEAD, conveniently buried 2 pages in, where I finally learn what the stupid thing is about

9) Not sure what comes next, because after wasting 10 minutes of my time I've lost interest.

So many of them are a standard 800 word article padded out to 5000 with no extra substance.

Too many editors still cling to the rules of print journalism, forgetting why those rules exist, and therefore failing to appreciate which can be modified or abandoned. For example, word count is preset in print because the piece needs to cover an area of a specific size on the paper. If you don't have a print distribution, it's silly to pad out writings. Just make the story as long or as short as it needs to be. Grumblescoff.

So much this. As someone who for my entire education had it drilled into my head that I should clearly state my thesis within the first paragraph or maybe the second paragraph in some cases but never take any longer than that, this style of long form writing drives me crazy. Especially in cases where I'm trying to skim the article for information. The standard read the first paragraph, last paragraph and each topic sentence method doesn't do you much good with these articles.

If your aim is 'the lead' why would you want a long form article? Personally, the elements you feel aren't substantive I like. They set the scene. If your goal is information that is obviously not very useful but if your goal is an enjoyable read that's entertaining and informative those elements are important.

Not the GP but I recognize the format he's posted. I have problems with articles that follow that sort of format because usually the author is taking an interesting story and bulking it up by talking about themselves instead of the subject. I want to get lost in the subject and my feelings about it. I can't really get lost in the author narrating their own feelings about the subject, it pulls me out of the story.

Yeah, they're imitating Hunter S. Thompson without really getting what he was doing.

The point of "Gonzo Journalism", as I understand it, was that the narrative around certain subjects (politics, drugs, America, etc) had become so toxically self-referential that there was simply no way to approach them objectively. Even if you could apply some strict journalistic standard, the reader would read it through such a noxious filter of propaganda that nothing would get through.

The only sane response in that case, from his perspective, was to simply throw one's entire self into the fray, indulging your neuroses, compulsions, and desires in and amongst the people you were reporting on, then to pour your whole self onto the page and simply allow the reader and you, through the sacred bond of reading and writing, to commune in some kind of spirit plane above the propaganda and doublespeak.

This leads to an (at the time) shocking blend of personal experiences and "on-topic" reporting. Of course decades later this kind of intermingling has become common and no longer shocks people.

I think the essayists you are complaining about are adopting the "Gonzo" form, blending the personal with the topical, but without actually throwing their full selves into the world they are reporting. Thus the personal bits don't really bear any connection to the topical, and don't aid the reader in seeing through the subjectivity to the subject, the way Fear and Loathing did.

I usually want a long form article when I want as much information as possible, and the subject is rich enough to warrant it.

Let's take, for instance, The Guardian's article about what will happen when the Queen of England dies[1]. The article is quite long, but that's because there are so many things that need to happen. The lack of personal anecdotes doesn't make the article any less entertaining.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...

A simple indication of the article's topic up front is is all I want. The title may hint it has something to do with "cheese", but when I can't figure out the topic is "a dairy strike over wages in Wisconsin is causing a cheese shortage" (completely made up example) until paragraph 20 I get annoyed.

The promise of modern long form journalism was deeper, more detailed reporting on complex subjects. Instead it's typically the same depth of reporting with a whole pile of details about the reporter's life and how the researched the story.

I know people like that style or it wouldn't be as common, but when I hear "long form" I want to leave far more informed than the typical newspaper article. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of that style out there.

This reminds me of the multi-part long-form reporting of scam letters from psychics. The substance could have been boiled down into a single, excellent long-form article. Instead, it was aggravatingly sprinkled across FIVE long-form articles!

Sometimes I like reading not just about the facts of the news but also about all the different worlds and ways of living out there. If you've enjoyed a conversation with an interesting stranger, that's kind of how I feel about longform. Most of the substance of the world does not fit neatly into bullet points, but is instead tied up in webs of human values and human stories.

You can imagine news reports containing all the facts about Anne Frank, but none would help you understand her nearly as well as reading her diary. Similarly, longform can be a valuable medium for learning about the life of a cybercriminal[1], an indigenous leader[2], or a stowaway at sea[3]. If the main thing you're missing is a description of what the piece is about, you'll probably like https://longform.org.

[1] https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

[2] https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/july/1467295200/gal...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scof...

In addition to the raw time investment, these are also exhausting because they impose on you to remember so much trivia and detail -- what's relevant? -- while they are building up to the eventual point. And when you don't know what's ultimately relevant and why you are noting and remembering all this (short term memory, at least), it becomes all the harder to stay on task and focused on / caring about remembering it.

I've come to hate the... I won't even call it an essay, because a well-written essay doesn't do this. There's a word for a short-form sort of (auto)-biography, that might apply; it escapes me.

Anyway, I've come to hate this form of "news". Even as story-telling, it blows, particularly when it becomes an all-pervasive form.

For those who like long form reading, this site is great: https://longform.org/

I usually send the articles to my Kindle (with a Chrome extension). It makes for comfortable reading.

Same here, I love Longform! I save them to my Instapaper and read them when I have downtime or am stuck somewhere (like a waiting room).

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