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"I think the modern journalism today has made a bet economically on very quick, very short and very fast. And I think what we'll see over time is that people will realize the economics of that are not so good. if everyone tries to be short, quick and fastest ultimately the reader goes someplace else." Pro-Publica's Steve Engelberg



I just listened to an amazing interview discussing longform journalism on WNYC, which I'm including above.

In the interview, they talk about our shortened attention spans -- a result of the Internet: status updates and 140-character tweets. Is this the end of longform journalism? the interviewer inquires. It's amazing how much this question relates to something I wrote a couple of years ago on here (and this was the days before Twitter was as ubiquitous as it is now). I am by no means anti-blogging -- wouldn't that be an ironic stance to make in a blog? Nor am I anti Twitter, Facebook, Gawker, Huffington Post, nor any other aggregator or blog out there. At least not officially. I think a lot of blogs, reporting in real time as events occur, are doing important, amazing work. And it's not easy work, either. But the bottom line for me is my heart belongs to longform. To the in-depth, literary-style pieces you find in the New Yorker. The articles written by Atul Gawande or Susan Orlean or Joan Didion or Jon Krakauer... those are the pieces I'm drawn to. And they're important. A lot has been written about the 24-hour news cycle and its impact on the future of journalism. But what if this "what's next. what's next. what's next"-style causes journalism to lose all analysis? All reflection? What if it's all reduced to a tweet: "Statement of Event. Snarky reaction. #Categorizing hashtag." in 140 characters.

After the revolution in Egypt, I saw several blog posts (several is an understatement here) giving themselves a big old pat on the back for their great work. This was the great victory of the Internet! While newspapers still had the stale front page headline that Mubarak was refusing to resign, Twitter and the blogosphere knew he'd stepped down. All hail the great Internet.

But while this was true - while the bloggers hashed out every last breaking detail - I saw very little analysis in any blog pieces written. And how could they? These are writers who are being paid for each click and page view and to pump out as many stories as they can (at least in most cases). They are working so quickly and so diligently to cover the news as it happens that they can't reflect on what it means. There are also blogs that are all analysis and editorial -- the aggregators. But to invest in both the extensive reporting and analysis of an indepth piece is an entirely different beast. Longform journalism is expensive. In the interview, they talk about some articles costing a half a million dollars. Research and time are real investments, and someone has to pay for them. Otherwise I believe the loss of longform journalism will come at a real cost to our society. Or at least to me at the 40 other luddites out there.