5 ms·

I really can't stand how articles like this bury the actual information (in this case, basically just CBT) deep in anecdotes and other context that I don't care

I really can't stand how articles like this bury the actual information (in this case, basically just CBT) deep in anecdotes and other context that I don't care about. Is it just me, or has it gotten worse lately? Maybe in the Age of the Short Attention Span, journalists have to come up with other ways of making the reader stick around?

fredsted 8y ago
The longer you stick around, the more ads can be shown.
emerongi 8y ago
Is there a name for this writing style? I remember writing essays in school padded with a lot of babble, just because there was a word limit. As an adult, anyone who writes like this is just wasting my time. It's low information density.
- swingline-747 8y ago
  Copy-writers' job security and greater eyeball time to sell ads. Succinct or GTFO. ;)
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  its long form journalism excerpt from wikipedia > Typically this will be between 1,000 and 20,000 words. Long-form articles often take the form of creative nonfiction or narrative journalism.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Long form journalism conveys an equally large amount of information as length. Articles like this just add fluff - anecdotes and tangential subjects that don’t add meaningful contextual value.
- pixelrevision 8y ago
  Well there’s “click bait”. The headline does not match up with the content at all. The article is about insomnia, the headline is about a cure.
  - barking 8y ago
    There's this new cure for insomnia and everybody is saying the same thing about it!
    - diegoperini 8y ago
      The cure is reading the article.
tragomaskhalos 8y ago
Totally. Sometimes, if one is really interested in the material and has time, it can be enjoyable to plough through the human interest fluff to get to the meat, but the majority of the time it just seems like a pretentious annoyance. Same deal with most popular science on TV - who has the time or energy to sit through an hour of tortuously drawn-out explanations interspersed with tangentially relevant video sequences, just to harvest the at most 5 mins of actually interesting fact?
Aardwolf 8y ago
Also hated it, started skimming paragraphs, still didn't get to the point, then came to the HN comments for a TL;DR I think there does exist an audience for this writing style though, so I'm not against those articles existing, it's good to have diverse styles, at least there is actual work put into writing this (it's not a "14 ways to improve sleep, number 8 will surprise you" page by page slideshow)
pixelrevision 8y ago
This article is excessively long and spend much more time talking about insomnia than the treatment.
- amelius 8y ago
  I almost fell asleep reading it :D
Angostura 8y ago
Probably best not to read the section of the paper explicitly called 'The Long Read'dwhich are designed as colour pieces.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  You'd expect articles in that section to be long because they cover a deep topic, not because the author felt the need to pad out the article with fluff.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
monkeynotes 8y ago
The problem is the article has a misleading headline and the author/editor are playing the click bait game. I think this becomes obvious if the nuts and bolts of the claim in the headline are not in the stand first. This is why I tend to abandon reading and go to comments if I don't see the headline affirmed in the first couple of paragraphs. It's not really about attention spans in my opinion, I simply don't have time to read all the hyperbole on the internet.
pasta 8y ago
As others point out: it's the click bait title. You open the article because you want to know about the cure. But the article is about insomnia. So you start skimming the article until you give up. If the title created an expectation to learn more about insomnia you might have read the whole article.
- chippy 8y ago
  >So you start skimming the article until you give up. I scrolled to see how long the article was, gave up and thought "the HN comments will have what it is about". Then thought bad about not reading the Featured Article, mentally shrugged, then clicked to the comments.

fredsted 8y ago

The longer you stick around, the more ads can be shown.

emerongi 8y ago

Is there a name for this writing style? I remember writing essays in school padded with a lot of babble, just because there was a word limit. As an adult, anyone who writes like this is just wasting my time. It's low information density.

swingline-747 8y ago
Copy-writers' job security and greater eyeball time to sell ads. Succinct or GTFO. ;)
thecatspaw 8y ago
its long form journalism excerpt from wikipedia > Typically this will be between 1,000 and 20,000 words. Long-form articles often take the form of creative nonfiction or narrative journalism.
- ianai 8y ago
  Long form journalism conveys an equally large amount of information as length. Articles like this just add fluff - anecdotes and tangential subjects that don’t add meaningful contextual value.
pixelrevision 8y ago
Well there’s “click bait”. The headline does not match up with the content at all. The article is about insomnia, the headline is about a cure.
- barking 8y ago
  There's this new cure for insomnia and everybody is saying the same thing about it!
  - diegoperini 8y ago
    The cure is reading the article.

tragomaskhalos 8y ago

Totally. Sometimes, if one is really interested in the material and has time, it can be enjoyable to plough through the human interest fluff to get to the meat, but the majority of the time it just seems like a pretentious annoyance. Same deal with most popular science on TV - who has the time or energy to sit through an hour of tortuously drawn-out explanations interspersed with tangentially relevant video sequences, just to harvest the at most 5 mins of actually interesting fact?

Aardwolf 8y ago

Also hated it, started skimming paragraphs, still didn't get to the point, then came to the HN comments for a TL;DR I think there does exist an audience for this writing style though, so I'm not against those articles existing, it's good to have diverse styles, at least there is actual work put into writing this (it's not a "14 ways to improve sleep, number 8 will surprise you" page by page slideshow)

pixelrevision 8y ago

This article is excessively long and spend much more time talking about insomnia than the treatment.

amelius 8y ago
I almost fell asleep reading it :D

Angostura 8y ago

Probably best not to read the section of the paper explicitly called 'The Long Read'dwhich are designed as colour pieces.

beaconstudios 8y ago
You'd expect articles in that section to be long because they cover a deep topic, not because the author felt the need to pad out the article with fluff.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

monkeynotes 8y ago

The problem is the article has a misleading headline and the author/editor are playing the click bait game. I think this becomes obvious if the nuts and bolts of the claim in the headline are not in the stand first. This is why I tend to abandon reading and go to comments if I don't see the headline affirmed in the first couple of paragraphs. It's not really about attention spans in my opinion, I simply don't have time to read all the hyperbole on the internet.

pasta 8y ago

As others point out: it's the click bait title. You open the article because you want to know about the cure. But the article is about insomnia. So you start skimming the article until you give up. If the title created an expectation to learn more about insomnia you might have read the whole article.

chippy 8y ago
>So you start skimming the article until you give up. I scrolled to see how long the article was, gave up and thought "the HN comments will have what it is about". Then thought bad about not reading the Featured Article, mentally shrugged, then clicked to the comments.