In November of last year, I wrote a post about digitized news articles and how their length affects a reader’s attention span. The post was inspired by a barrage of comments from angry Too Shy to Stop readers who thought Peter Ricci’s “The Sad Nature of Adaptation, or Why the Media Sucks” was way too long.
“I was shocked by the commenters’ need to impose a word limit for online writing. Show me the textbook that says online writing can’t be longer than 2,000 words or bring me to the class where the professor is teaching this rule,” I wrote, in defense of Peter’s desire to fully explore his subject matter.
Well, in the January/February 2010 issues of The Atlantic, writer Michael Kinsley explores a similar issue; he claims that newspaper articles are too long, which is why many readers are turning to the Internet for their news.
Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory…Once upon a time, this unnecessary stuff was considered an advance over dry news reporting: don’t just tell the story; tell the reader what it means. But providing “context,” as it was known, has become an invitation to hype.
I have a feeling that articles in print magazines like The New Yorker and newspapers in The New York Times are so long to match the need for ad space: the more writing on the page, the more room there is to insert advertisements. On the web, however, advertisements are generally smaller and more specifically placed.
Kinsley seems to think that ALL writing on the Internet is succinct. What about print publications that republish the same articles online? If the print edition of The New York Times stops being published, will this mean that all the writing on the NY Times website will suddenly become more direct and to the point?
I’m not really sure what kind of distinction he is trying to make between print and digital media.
Though Ricci knew that he was writing exclusively for the Internet, this fact did not cause him to write any differently. He wrote his piece lavishly, using many examples to back up his case. In Ricci’s defense, I like the look of text on a webpage. I think it immediately gives the page in question credibility (even more so if the text is well-written!). I don’t trust websites with little content.
On any given day, I have at least ten tabs open in Firefox, usually articles that I find on Twitter, Facebook, via Google News, or favorite blogs that I follow on Google Reader. I keep them open and return to them throughout the day, switching between the tabs and my work. I actually find it easier to skim articles when I read them online, and I don’t feel the way I do when I pick up a magazine and only read one article. I can pick and choose what I want to read.
I use my cursor on the screen to help me scan an article and find the points that are important to me. Reading on the web has made me such an efficient reader that I now have to completely adjust when I read a print book. I have to focus on every word rather than scan the page. Online, I have the satisfaction of sharing articles with friends and quickly pointing out parts they should read.
Have you ever seen comment threads on articles? They can be endless, they can go on forever, and you can spend more time reading comments than you can reading an article. But I’m sure you learn a lot from reading other people’s opinions. There is so much to be shared on the Internet.
I actually think the Internet is a place where ideas can be more fully fleshed out. I think people should take advantage of the boundless medium. Why does everyone think that we have to write in short bits of content? Sure, everything online is constantly updated, and the deluge of information can be rather overwhelming, but YOU have to learn how to be your best reader/chooser of content. You have to learn how to read quickly and efficiently and to pay attention to things that matter and are interesting to you.
Michael Kinsley, print is dead, a non-issue – I don’t even know why you’re referring to it. The issue we have to tackle is why everyone is so offended by long-form articles on the web.
(Photo by Pingu1963)
I think the problem with long-form online articles isn’t in the way most of them are written, but in the way many of them are laid out on the screen.
Too much copy on the page is an ocular assault, especially if the typeface is thin or too small. Long New York Times articles do well online because the grafs are visually broken into smaller bits, and articles are broken into multiple pages.
Still, I agree with The Atlantic’s Kinsley: Print articles tend to be bloated. But just because print is dead doesn’t mean print-style writing is too.