5 ms·

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling f

I am sorry to see them go, but more for the principle than for the site itself. I gave up on the site when I realized that I was spending more time scrolling for something interesting than actually reading articles. Even now, out of their top 10 "best of 2021" I find only 3 of those even remotely interesting, and IMHO one of them is garbage (I read it when it came out). The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane. The Guardian's article on what will happen when the Queen dies [1] is my go-to example of long form journalism done right. longform.org articles always felt more like "here's a sad story about some global issue", which is not the type of article I want to read during my commute. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...

phgn 5y ago
Your point applies to much more than long-form articles. We spend so much time subscribing and scrolling through information sources just to be "aware" things exist (it's the worst for news). If we'd really want to read something great or understand a topic deeply, everyone has huge read-it-later lists and bookmark collections. But filtering and discovering new things is somehow much more rewarding than reading or understanding itself.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  Much of my leasure time is spent working with my hands when I'd rather be reading thinking and learning. I burn through audio books at a good clip but I still haven't found a good way to get random articles read to me. And in the mean time, they stack up for true pleasure time which is rare for me. When I get a chance, I might make myself a pocket to Amazon Polly pipeline or something. The difficulty is that to make this a commercial product would almost certainly be a copyright violation and not ethical to the actual writers anyway. I'd love to do the same for a lot of my email but I don't know if I want to upload that and I'd have to do quite a bit of parsing to get the meat and skip the re: re: re: re: so that's out there a bit.
dredmorbius 5y ago
I have to say my own impression is similar. I'm a fan of high-quality, significant, long-form, content. I'm ... not really seeing that here. A few good pieces, but that's from their own self-admitted "best of". If not necessarily an outright failure, then a mismatch of goals and attainment. And as has been frequently noted on HN (occasionally by myself), length itself is not a marke of quality in writing. Requisite complexity is, that is, the structure of the piece itself should be suited and fitted to what it is it addresses. Longform wouldn't be the only place the false equivalence that "long" == "good" seems asserted. The New Yorker, which likewise has both a long legacy and recent history of producing good high-quality long pieces, also seems to fall far too frequently into the trap of mistaking length for quality. I appreciate the effort and intent. I'm sorry to see the attempt failed. But execution was in fact lacking.
- ramphastidae 5y ago
  How is this a failure? They are evolving with the times. Longform served their users with article recommendations for nearly 12 years, but times have changed. Services like Instapaper, Pocket, etc. are no longer popular, and so they’re focusing on podcasting — which is basically the future of longform journalism. Kudos to them.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    There are successful long-form text sites. Longform.org ... hasn't delivered. Switching formats without improving content won't address the core problem.
oxfeed65261 5y ago
What an outstanding article! Thanks so much for posting it.
_n_b_ 5y ago
> The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane. May I humbly suggest this long-but-interesting 2008 New Yorker article about elevators, if you haven’t already read this seminal work in the genre? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-down https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-do...
- bluedays 5y ago
  This is one of those articles I think about constantly. Especially when I get on the elevator. I wish we had more articles like this.
- mstade 5y ago
  What a great read, thank you for sharing!
- prometheus76 5y ago
  May I also suggest "Going Down the Pipes" by Darcy Frey. Written in 1996 about the strange and stressful world of air traffic controllers at Newark airport. Well-written long form journalism on display. https://www.topic.com/going-down-the-pipes https://www.topic.com/going-down-the-pipes
bloopernova 5y ago
That Guardian article is part of a series called "The Long Read" which seems apropos: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read (I subscribe to the Guardian, so I don't know if there's a paywall in front of those articles, my apologies if there is)
- lproven 5y ago
  The Guardian doesn't use paywalls, anywhere... but you might have to create a free account and log in.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tale stopped, it would go on and on, but on this particularly vibrant autumn day I didn't mind that the old man didn't quite seem to make any point in his meandering story with endless fractal-like asides as the dappled sun played teased the pile of pipe-ash on the ground. I sometimes wonder if he talked just because he couldn't stand the silence and the memories of what really happened out at sea. I think a lot of long form content sadly is long in order to be long, not because it has particularly much to say. Instead you get an overlong mess of barely relevant anecdotes and flourish that don't add to anything other than the length of the piece. The problem with quality writing is that it takes time to think through and time to produce, and time is not something that is afforded journalists and writers today.
- alex_suzuki 5y ago
  I almost zoned out there, reading about your uncle. Limited attention span.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    I was looking for the recipe for some maritime dish that I was sure would appear at the bottom of that comment.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Agreed; majority of long-form doesn't actually necessarily have a lot to say, and is not written as cleverly or engagingly as hoped/needed. There are however exceptions and those are real jewels :)
  - hbn 5y ago
    I've noticed that this is something that also happened in YouTube video essays. I remember at the dawn of them when I thought it was so cool that there was people out there making these super in-depth videos on all sorts of topics. But over the past few years it drew in the attention of people who really don't have much to say, and stretch these videos on, talking in circles, as if longer video = better/more interesting. I recently saw YouTube recommend me a video essay on the Nickelodeon TV show, Victorious, that was literally more than 5 and a half hours long. Admittedly I haven't watched it (for obvious reasons) but I just can't imagine it really justifies that entire runtime.
saperyton 5y ago
Thinking About Things [0] is fantastic. They're also great for discovery because they link to many other sites - they've feature a lot of little-known blogs that are quite interesting. [0] https://thinking-about-things.com/ https://thinking-about-things.com/
- kej 5y ago
  URL fix, bare domain doesn't redirect to www: https://www.thinking-about-things.com/ https://www.thinking-about-things.com/
gibolt 5y ago
I think you will thoroughly enjoy Adam Savage's (of Mythbusters fame) recent video on measurement. https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI
whoibrar 5y ago
> The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane. I have been thinking about this for a while and it now just clicks.

phgn 5y ago

Your point applies to much more than long-form articles. We spend so much time subscribing and scrolling through information sources just to be "aware" things exist (it's the worst for news). If we'd really want to read something great or understand a topic deeply, everyone has huge read-it-later lists and bookmark collections. But filtering and discovering new things is somehow much more rewarding than reading or understanding itself.

jethro_tell 5y ago
Much of my leasure time is spent working with my hands when I'd rather be reading thinking and learning. I burn through audio books at a good clip but I still haven't found a good way to get random articles read to me. And in the mean time, they stack up for true pleasure time which is rare for me. When I get a chance, I might make myself a pocket to Amazon Polly pipeline or something. The difficulty is that to make this a commercial product would almost certainly be a copyright violation and not ethical to the actual writers anyway. I'd love to do the same for a lot of my email but I don't know if I want to upload that and I'd have to do quite a bit of parsing to get the meat and skip the re: re: re: re: so that's out there a bit.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I have to say my own impression is similar. I'm a fan of high-quality, significant, long-form, content. I'm ... not really seeing that here. A few good pieces, but that's from their own self-admitted "best of". If not necessarily an outright failure, then a mismatch of goals and attainment. And as has been frequently noted on HN (occasionally by myself), length itself is not a marke of quality in writing. Requisite complexity is, that is, the structure of the piece itself should be suited and fitted to what it is it addresses. Longform wouldn't be the only place the false equivalence that "long" == "good" seems asserted. The New Yorker, which likewise has both a long legacy and recent history of producing good high-quality long pieces, also seems to fall far too frequently into the trap of mistaking length for quality. I appreciate the effort and intent. I'm sorry to see the attempt failed. But execution was in fact lacking.

ramphastidae 5y ago
How is this a failure? They are evolving with the times. Longform served their users with article recommendations for nearly 12 years, but times have changed. Services like Instapaper, Pocket, etc. are no longer popular, and so they’re focusing on podcasting — which is basically the future of longform journalism. Kudos to them.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  There are successful long-form text sites. Longform.org ... hasn't delivered. Switching formats without improving content won't address the core problem.

oxfeed65261 5y ago

What an outstanding article! Thanks so much for posting it.

_n_b_ 5y ago

> The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane. May I humbly suggest this long-but-interesting 2008 New Yorker article about elevators, if you haven’t already read this seminal work in the genre? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-down https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-do...

bluedays 5y ago
This is one of those articles I think about constantly. Especially when I get on the elevator. I wish we had more articles like this.
mstade 5y ago
What a great read, thank you for sharing!
prometheus76 5y ago
May I also suggest "Going Down the Pipes" by Darcy Frey. Written in 1996 about the strange and stressful world of air traffic controllers at Newark airport. Well-written long form journalism on display. https://www.topic.com/going-down-the-pipes https://www.topic.com/going-down-the-pipes

bloopernova 5y ago

That Guardian article is part of a series called "The Long Read" which seems apropos: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read (I subscribe to the Guardian, so I don't know if there's a paywall in front of those articles, my apologies if there is)

lproven 5y ago
The Guardian doesn't use paywalls, anywhere... but you might have to create a free account and log in.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

When I was seven years old, I had an uncle with a grey beard and an eye-patch that would take me out on walks and tell long stories about his history as a sailor in the merchant marines. He had been at sea for fourteen years and visited just about every country, even the landlocked ones he would say with his signature smoker's laugh. Uncle Robert tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot as we stopped. Not that his tale stopped, it would go on and on, but on this particularly vibrant autumn day I didn't mind that the old man didn't quite seem to make any point in his meandering story with endless fractal-like asides as the dappled sun played teased the pile of pipe-ash on the ground. I sometimes wonder if he talked just because he couldn't stand the silence and the memories of what really happened out at sea. I think a lot of long form content sadly is long in order to be long, not because it has particularly much to say. Instead you get an overlong mess of barely relevant anecdotes and flourish that don't add to anything other than the length of the piece. The problem with quality writing is that it takes time to think through and time to produce, and time is not something that is afforded journalists and writers today.

alex_suzuki 5y ago
I almost zoned out there, reading about your uncle. Limited attention span.
- rchaud 5y ago
  I was looking for the recipe for some maritime dish that I was sure would appear at the bottom of that comment.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
Agreed; majority of long-form doesn't actually necessarily have a lot to say, and is not written as cleverly or engagingly as hoped/needed. There are however exceptions and those are real jewels :)
- hbn 5y ago
  I've noticed that this is something that also happened in YouTube video essays. I remember at the dawn of them when I thought it was so cool that there was people out there making these super in-depth videos on all sorts of topics. But over the past few years it drew in the attention of people who really don't have much to say, and stretch these videos on, talking in circles, as if longer video = better/more interesting. I recently saw YouTube recommend me a video essay on the Nickelodeon TV show, Victorious, that was literally more than 5 and a half hours long. Admittedly I haven't watched it (for obvious reasons) but I just can't imagine it really justifies that entire runtime.

saperyton 5y ago

Thinking About Things [0] is fantastic. They're also great for discovery because they link to many other sites - they've feature a lot of little-known blogs that are quite interesting. [0] https://thinking-about-things.com/ https://thinking-about-things.com/

kej 5y ago
URL fix, bare domain doesn't redirect to www: https://www.thinking-about-things.com/ https://www.thinking-about-things.com/

gibolt 5y ago

I think you will thoroughly enjoy Adam Savage's (of Mythbusters fame) recent video on measurement. https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI

whoibrar 5y ago

> The type of articles I like the most are those when someone takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain something mundane. I have been thinking about this for a while and it now just clicks.