Long-form journalism and how to guard it against the induced ADD of the Internet is a hot topic recently. The Guardian’s Bobbie Johnson is the latest to tackle it. (He isn’t the first and won’t be the last.) His piece focuses on sites like the one above, Longform.org, that aggregate, promote and facilitate the reading of the feature-length articles most commonly found in magazines and the weekend editions of newspapers.
With a minimalist’s confidence, LF.org aggregates the best in long-form journalist, paying little heed to when something was published, just whether or not it’s worth your time. The site is easy to look at and fun to browse. And using something called Instapaper, it allows you to bookmark whatever strikes your fancy in whatever medium (except for paper!) you choose.
By focusing on sites like Longform.org, however, Johnson focuses on only one aspect of the problem (if you believe that there is a problem): finding it. Namely, Johnson argues that long-form pieces can be saved by good aggregation. To put his money where his mouth, Johnson started a Twitter feed called “IfYouOnly” to highlight one story a day that you should read.
What long-form journalism suffers from online is not only that it has a short shelf life, but that it doesn’t have its own design. Individualizing long-form journalism has never been the web’s priority. When space is infinite, a 500-word piece is no different from a 4,000-word piece. Each is put into the same cookie-cutter template.
For long-form journalism to survive online, this needs to change.
Editorial sites must focus more on the reading experience. Each feature-length story needs to be individualized and treated with the same care and thoughtfulness that they are in print. (Advancements in CSS/jquery/HTML make this possible to do in a short period of time.) If editorial sites would just respect their long-form content a bit more, invest more time in the design and layout of individual articles, invest more time in creating an unique experience for their readers, they would create a product, and likewise a brand, that will be remembered.
