Hacker News Reader

Comment by tmsbrg | Hacker News Reader

Another one of those articles that's too long for its own good.

Thought at the title: Fraud, organic food, yes. This must be interesting.

Reading through the start: Okay, here's the life story of someone who's going to do something halfway through this article. Let me check how long this article is.

Jeez. It's gonna be a long read and I still don't get what it's about. I'll pass.

Thought I'd mention this as it's become a common thing in media lately.

View on HN

I hear you, but this kind of thing falls under this umbrella:

"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The problem is not so much with such comments in their own right but the fact that they quickly inflate into the kudzuey sort of discussion that chokes out more interesting things.

The New Yorker magazine has been around for almost 100 years and has been famous for the length of its articles almost as long. Tina Brown, the editor in the 1990s famously made the articles shorter than they had been, and it hasn’t crept back up since she left.

All this to say, sure, the article is long. But the New Yorker always has done it this way and this is not anything about the media lately. If anything, long articles are a holdover from a long previous time.

Also, all media styles and don’t have to appeal to everyone. The magazine has its audience and you may not be a part of it. Neither aspect is a bad thing.

Well this is a New Yorker piece and not a newspaper. Though I agree that there are an abundance of overstoried posts that bury the lede under a bunch of considerably less interesting context.

it's become a common thing in media lately.

This is how The New Yorker as done this since forever. If you don't enjoy the 'journey' of their writing at least as much as the 'destination', then they are not the publications for you.

Although I agree that the style is being copied by more and more people and outlets, many which don't have the skill to pull it off.

I've read many a book (recently, "The Unbanking of America," which was recommended by another commenter on HN, or "Veils of Distortion") where the author did not have nearly enough material for a book, but perhaps had enough material for a New Yorker article. So think of the New Yorker as saving the world from material that would have been even longer if it were in a book.

I have no qualms with reading a long, well written piece but I don’t understand how leading with a 4 paragraph life summary is supposed to hook the reader. Especially when the title is so brash?

I think it's a relic of old-school journalistic writing. People today just do not have the attention span or desire to read a meandering backstory. The author started writing for the New Yorker in 1992, so it seems reasonable that he is more old-fashioned in his composition.

Free from the constraints of ink, paper and distribution costs, this could be a good development.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com