5 ms·
In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia."
by cddotdotslash 11y ago
In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary.
- Johnie 11y agoI thought there was some technological reason (ie battery dead), but it seems like it's just a funding thing. The batteries only had 30 days of life anyway.
- imglorp 11y agoThat's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where-why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.
- hga 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid
- myNXTact 11y agoSo what? This isn't a newspaper article, it is a nonfiction story. Bloomberg contains sections of their magazines written in your format; I always skip them. I prefer the long-form stories.
- logicrook 11y agoHonestly, why? After reading a few of them, I was completely sick of this format. It appears to me as information-free fluff, written in a very generic style. What do you like in this format? I genuinely don't understand how it can sell, but if it does, there must be something?
- Splines 11y agoLow density information is easier to digest. Plus, like a stick of gum, sometimes you just have nothing to do and it fills the time.
- tcpekin 11y agoIt can also be fun to read something that just isn't parsed down to the bare facts. For example, in my opinion, [0] would be much less interesting without the benefits of long form journalism. [0] http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...
- logicrook 11y agoIt seems that most often the pieces that try to be too literary (or too story-esque) tend to distort the facts to best fit the narrative (or rather the narrative fallacy). Doesn't that worry you?
- SerLava 11y agoThe problem is labeling. The headline says the article is information about the urgency of the search. It's an intentional lie because "How the MH370 Search is Going" or whatever won't get clicks.
- TrevorJ 11y agoIt's the business model. The longer you are on a web page the more ad cycles you see. I agree with you, its' not good writing, but I think that is where it comes from.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoBut the more you annoy the reader that's just looking for the reason the search is going to fail in 30 days. And the more you do that as a business, the more a bunch of readers (those who prefer that you not waste their time) get inoculated to you, and quit clicking on links to you. That's bad business.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat's bad long-term, but profitable short-term. It's rare a business that cares about the former.
- imglorp 11y agoGood point. There's new requirements on writers now. In the old days, they'd buy your paper if they could scan all the stories and get information easily. Now, the reader is only looking at one story referred by a search engine or blogpost or link farm.
- baddox 11y agoIt's called "long-form journalism." It's apparently extremely popular, but I consider it to be the worst medium ever invented.
- notatoad 11y agoThere's nothing wrong with long form journalism if you have a complex story to tell with lots of information to convey. The problem is not with the format, it's with journalists trying to pad out a tweet's worth of information into a long-form article.
- baddox 11y agoI'm much less forgiving of the format. Every example I've seen has been a colossal and seemingly deliberate waste of the reader's (my) time. Even when it is reasonably skillfully written and contains information on a subject I'm interested in, I vastly prefer the writing style of, say, Wikipedia.
- tcpekin 11y agoWhy not just read for the pleasure of it? Do you every read anything from The New Yorker, or Esquire, or The Atlantic, etc.? There can be great stories that are enjoyable to read, while still being nonfiction.
- eslaught 11y agoNo, I think GP is right. Compare a typical long-form piece to e.g. a textbook. A well-written textbook has much more information, but still organizes it in such a way so that you can quickly understand what you're getting into. By comparison, I find that long-form journalism typically buries this information so that even if there is a meaningful summary, you have to build it yourself (and obviously you can only do this after having spent the time to read it in the first place).
- baddox 11y agoMy point is that long-form journalism isn't pleasurable to read. The writing style is incredibly belabored, and I am fairly convinced that this is the intention of the authors. It clearly works for many readers, but not for me, and I wish there was always a clearer upfront distinction between traditional news articles and long-form articles.
- Nicholas_C 11y agoIsn't there an add on or an app or something that summarizes articles via NLP? It would be nice to have an interstitial pop up with the article summarized and the ability to click out and read the full thing for more color.
- jml7c5 11y agoSee https://www.reddit.com/user/autotldr https://www.reddit.com/user/autotldr
- grahamburger 11y ago> I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary. This is exactly what I've wanted but never known how to express it ... is there such a thing? I would love to browse a list of news stories distilled to factual bullet points. Sigh. One can dream :)
- draw_down 11y agoBut it's strange to call June "weeks away", June is months away.