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Got through the first 3 paragraphs where the title hadn't even been acknowledge, let alone answered, and stopped reading. Increasing I find storytelling in jou
by Touche 10y ago
Got through the first 3 paragraphs where the title hadn't even been acknowledge, let alone answered, and stopped reading.
Increasing I find storytelling in journalism to be less and less tolerable. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely a place for long form non-fiction. If this were titled in such a way that it were to be a story and not a fact-piece I would probably have less of a problem with it; I could have filed it away in a to-read-later bookmark.
But when the title elicits that there is information to be had; I want that information, and nothing else.
- sseppola 10y agoThis is why I (often) check the comments first
- mrep 10y agoYes, but they aren't nearly as bad as the new yorker. A few weeks ago, I started to read this article on the hiroshima bombs and it started out awesome. However, after the few first paragraphs, they start going off on the life stories for each of the characters while adding tons of extraneous details. I gave up in frustration after 10 minutes of that crap. That's happened to me almost every time i go there so now I usually just autofilter new yorker articles out. I've been trying to think of a new term for this type of writing as it's not quite clickbait but I haven't come up with anything quite as catchy.
- nappy-doo 10y agoThat's actually an incredible article that started the whole long-form news trend (1946). The New Yorker dedicated the entire issue to the story, and it's been republished as a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book) I'd recommend you try and read it again.
- andrewem 10y agoSounds like you're referring to "Hiroshima", published as the entire editorial content of an issue of the New Yorker shortly after the war, later published as a book of the same title, and IMHO one of the most important magazine articles ever written. (For instance, here's an entire web site about that article: http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/index.php http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/index.php)
- importantbrian 10y agoI'm glad someone else shares my frustration with long form journalism these days. Your thesis should always be clear from your first paragraph. I read some of these articles and I'm half way through and I still don't know what the point is.
- inquist 10y agoThat first anecdote in the article is relevant, and the article does eventually get to talking about Google. This is the nature of long-form, it doesn't have to dive straight in.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> This is the nature of long-form Let's not confuse long-form "there's a lot to be said here" with long-form "we really like padding".
- mdellabitta 10y ago"The story of computing begins roughly 4000 years ago..."
- stuxnet79 10y agoThere is so much content online, and readers are so fickle that it makes too much sense to me for writers to be as concise and straight to the point as possible. I read the article on the subway train so I didn't have much else to do but if this was a tab I was glancing over at work I wouldn't have made it past the first paragraph.
- wpietri 10y agoThere are different reading modes. The New York Times Magazine in particular caters to people who are sitting down on a quiet day for long reads. It was created specifically to hold pieces longer than appropriate for the normal newspaper. So here, it definitely doesn't make sense for writers to be as straight-to-the-point as possible. It's like asking for some long, cinematic movie (e.g., Lawrence of Arabia or The Revenant) to be edited down to a 60-second YouTube video. Sure, you could squeeze in the highlights, but it would miss the point. Sometimes you want a grab-and-go sandwich from a drive-through. Sometimes you want a relaxed 2-hour meal with old friends.
- stuxnet79 10y ago
- joelg 10y agoThat's really unfortunate and naive. Not everything, particularly the subtle dynamics of human interaction, can be succinctly distilled into an abstract-style paragraph. Oftentimes it takes great writing skill to set right perspective, context, and background for the information to make sense or "click" - perspective which I find to be more valuable than the raw "information" or study results. Storytelling is sometimes the only way to properly convey information. - slightly edited for clarity -
- CuriouslyC 10y agoStorytelling is NEVER the ONLY way to convey information, though it can be the MOST EFFICIENT. Specifically, the narrative form tends to be more memorable/impactful than disconnected propositions, so if the majority of the context in the story is necessary to understand the information, it ends up being a net win.
- vorotato 10y agoYou remember the concept of a thesis statement? This author didn't.
- Touche 10y agoRead my other comment; the title didn't convey this subtlety so I didn't expect the article to.
- skrish 10y agoI enjoyed listening to the book "Smarter Faster Better" in which this article is one of the chapters. http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Smarter-Faster-Better-Audiobook/B017WRZO9U http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Smarter-Faster-Better-Aud... It also deals with how the script of movie "Frozen" evolved and I found that very interesting as well. It showcases how your idea gets better & better for execution because of the team.
- tgb 10y agoNo, I'm with Touche here. Too many articles hide the actual story under a "human angle" aspect where we have to learn about someone's early childhood growing up in Soviet Russia, or their first failed business, or that time their father said Something Memorable to them. I've read so many of those now that I start to fall asleep before the article begins talking about whatever it is talking about. The naivety on display here is the journalists sticking hard-and-fast to the rules we're taught in middle school English class: you have to have a "hook" so that the audience get's caught! But those hooks are artificial and repetitive - let the content speak for itself. If it can't, then the article isn't worth my reading. Anecdotes are still relevant. But using them religiously as the opening turns me away.
- zzzcpan 10y agoThe whole article is about how empathy and a safe place to speak up make a better team. But as usual for nytimes journalists, the reading is barely tolerable.
- humanrebar 10y agoThat's my understanding as well. Perhaps the author wanted the reader to empathize with the people in the article? Seems reasonable, but perhaps it might be premature, given the premise is that we have some problems empathizing in certain contexts. Maybe this is one of them.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- raldi 10y agoI skimmed the entire article and it just kept teasing and teasing but seemingly never revealed the promised information. If it's in there at all, it's well hidden.
- tswartz 10y agoHere's the TL;DR After studying over 180 google teams they didn't find any evidence that the composition of the teams mattered (i.e. friends outside of work, male/female, introverts, extroverts, intelligence). Instead what they focused on were the “group norms” or unwritten rules of how the groups interacted with each other. There were two norms that were most important to a successful group. 1) Members spoke in roughly the same proportion, what the researchers call, ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ 2) Members all had “average social sensitivity”. They could understand how other team members felt based on non-verbal queues. The underperforming teams had low sensitivity amongst the team members.
- aangjie 10y agoThanks for the TLDR.. that's almost Feynmanesque..
- efa 10y agoYeah, this has been driving me crazy lately. Reminds me of local news. "Important information for parents. Find out the dangerous thing that may be hurting your kids.". But we're not going to tell you. We'll keep teasing it over and over. It's really important, but we really don't care if you get the info.