Tag : journalism

Of all the things I love to read, long form is my favourite

I have enjoyed long form journalism for a very long time. I like a story that's lengthy enough to grow familiar: events I can dread or anticipate, characters I can get to know and watch change. I like going on that journey.

Long form used to be a bit of a rare beast, but this has changed over the past year. There are more places to get your long form fix these days, and more and more of them are online.

Curiously enough, while the rest of the publishing industry endures a series of beatings from the world wide web, things in the long form corner are starting to look brighter. 

On Thursday I took part in The Media Briefing’s debut event, Paywall Strategies 2011. The day was dedicated to exploring a variety of different approached to paid digital content and assessing the merits, weaknesses and underlying principles of each. 

At the start of this month I suggested that Rolling Stone’s McChrystal expose was the story of the year. I was wrong. Whistleblowing website Wikileaks’s release of more than 75,000 classified military documents — collectively referred to as the Afghanistan war logs — is now the story everyone is talking about, and it is unlikely this will change anytime soon.

A security breach/freeing of information (as you like) such as this is pretty much unprecedented, although many are comparing it to the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers (including DanielEllsberg, the man behind that leak).

Just as with the Pentagon Papers, the leak and the subsequent publication of previously classified information are just part of a complex knot of stories. Who leaked this? What do we make of what we read? What next for Afghanistan, for the US military and indeed for ISAF as a whole? — these are only the immediate questions.

I’ve read too many blog posts recently about pay walls and the future (or lack thereof) of journalism. With the debate raging and being nowhere close to resolution, I needed to remind myself of just how much online advertising sucks.

Two weeks ago, some colleagues and I attended a Frontline Club talk on apps, paywalls and the future of journalism (for a recap, see William Owen’s excellent post). I found the experience very interesting but also very frustrating. I should say up front that this post is deliberately provocative: I am heartsick at the state of the news industry (one I respect and value to no end) and I want to do something about it — or at least start a discussion that does.

Last Thursday (27th August) at 09:49 I posted the following tweet…

Ikea want to give the same impression on the web and in print so they use Verdana everywhere. It goes much deeper than just a font folks.

Like most tweets, I posted and thought nothing more of it. In fact, I thought I was a bit late coming to this party as plenty of others had been bemoaning Ikea’s new font choice for a few days.