Cut what? The rise and fall of long-form journalism

Michael Kinsley, a commenter for the Atlantic, wrote "Cut this Story" on his blog. He claims that the articles in most literary-style newspapers are way too long, and this is part of the reason mainstream American newspapers are losing their audience.

The same thing has occurred to me before. Indian newspapers are notoriously short on space. Every writer's main complaint is that his stories don't get enough play, and his editors neglect him. Front page stories in the Hindustan Times or the Times of India conclude in 200 words or fewer. It's a word limit that would boggle and probably gag most of the kids I went to J-school with.

There was a time when all newspapers looked like Indian newspapers. But sometime in the 1930s a series of American writers started to apply short story techniques to what were otherwise news stories. They expanded the definition of "human interest." The modern feature story - sometimes indistinguishable, in style, from a work of fiction - was born. Feature stories were long and lovely, and they attracted a lot of attention to their writers. Suddenly everyone wanted to be a "features-style" writer, because those were the "good writers." News became more features-y as writers tried to outdo themselves with quotes and contextualizing. The major journalism awards all began to go to clunker stories, nothing under 12,000 words need apply.

The result: stories that are much longer than they need to be.

I've struggled with this at my outlet. Every word matters. I frequently turn in copy that's twice the necessary word length. Learning to write to our word limits is a challenging and ongoing process, but I think I've benefited from it.

The big question, of course, is: does this encourage good writing at all? (The bigger question: does it matter?) The bottom line is that I'll only read 12,000 words if every one of them tells me something I don't already know. (There is, of course, a place for style. Some stories should be long. But not all. There are a lot of routine "political" stories on WaPo that could be pared.) The point is that stories should "earn" their space, and not all do. Competition sometimes leads to a leaner, meaner product. That's what's happening with American media.

Kinsley's other point is even more interesting, which is that all news at the national level needs to be filtered through politics. His point applies to newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. There's too much politics and political jargon in most newspapers, and most people are not interested in it. When did that happen? (And incidentally, this happens in WaPo's stories and TOI's, so clearly this political echo effect knows no cultural barriers)