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Suddenly everyone wants New Yorker style content. Who is going to write it?
- ghurlman 14y agoI'm pretty sure the article author meant "New York style" journalism, not stories written as if they belonged in the New Yorker magazine.
- mrkurt 14y agoThey definitely meant journalism as written for the New Yorker magazine, it's generally considered to be one of the best publications out there for long form, investigative journalism.
- esrauch 14y agoIs "New York style journalism" a preexisting term? A quick google doesn't seem to turn up anything.
- gmkoliver 14y agoI think she meant New Yorker, so it was funny that she talked about newspapers for most of the article.
- TYPE_FASTER 14y agoIn the first couple paragraphs..."Simply put: It was easy and cheap for a lot of other players on the Web to outdo daily newspaper journalism for cheap or free." But her point is that investigative journalism like that seen in the New Yorker won't convert to free web content as easily.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThe question isn't really who is going to write it. It's who is going to pay for it?
- mcantelon 14y agoYeah, 4 cents/word (what Tumblr is paying) is a joke. Claiming there's a shortage of writers is ridiculous. There's lot of good writers out there.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoNow that I've actually finished the article (heh), I think it's asking a very good question. What she's really saying is: 1) Readers want good long-form articles 2) Some sites are even willing to pay for it 3) But, there are no longer up-and-comers being trained to produce such work, there are only the writers who already have the experience. What she's saying is not all that different from the complaint you see about hiring developers- Everyone wants someone with 5 years experience, but there's a lack of opportunities for people to get that 5 years experience. I think that's an exaggerated complaint in the software industry, but maybe not as much in the journalism biz.
- barkingcat 14y agoThis is the wrong approach. You don't train someone to produce such works. These types of proses are more like a personal distillation of experiences. You can take a handful of olympic athletes, pair them up with a great editor and writer team, and come up with a great story about what happened at the london olympics. That would be a cover worthy story. It's not about training writers who can churn out articles. It's about understanding that writing itself is an art, not something that can be trained, but something that needs to be invented. Put it in terms that people on hacker news would probably understand - Writing a major New Yorker cover story is like finding the topic, writing, and then defending a PhD thesis. You have to come up with an original thought, support it with research and original experimentation, distill it down, test your hypothesis, and see if your thesis is still solid. After rounds and rounds of editing, repositioning, rewriting, and PIVOTING, you come out with a kernel of an article - the amount of words written would be approx 10 - 20 times the amount of text that would actually be published. The rest would be research material and stuff "left on the editing table". You can't train that. Successful authors understand this - all of their advice to young writers would include something like - "only you know what kind of story you want to write" - "keep practicing" "keep writing every day". There is no handbook to learn, no school to go to. Journalism school gives you a template of what other people have done, but at the same time, I consider it a waste of time for writers. Just go out there experience the world, talk to as many people as you can, and write seriously every single day. You'll come out the other side with a comparable set of skills as someone who went to school for journalism. --- So what is the right approach? For me, it would be encouragement - start young - get education right. Bring up childhood and adult literacy, give people the ability to think and reason. Increase funding to schools and give teachers a better deal. You'll find more and more kids wanting to write, keep practicing it, and thus we get better writers when they grow up. For the immediate situation, the same thing applies - give people who want to write the chance to tell their story. Increase funding commitments to schools and higher education. Get people talking about writing as an actual practice instead of as an advertising technique (ie writing copy) or as a purely legalistic/procedural language (ie taxes, lawsuits, and manuals). People will become more interested in writing and the skills required in literacy. Who knows, the best story might be hiding there in the heart of that guy you pass by every day living on the streets.
- Tycho 14y agoAll I really want from journalists is the information that most of us are too lazy or busy to collect. I want them to make phone calls, speak to insiders, cross reference public statements with available records, generally make a nuisance of themselves until they have some new insights to bring to light. Most times though it seems they're barely doing any more research than what went into a well received HN comment. Except some articles are padded out with details of what the reporter is having for lunch during the interview... I've got no idea why that type of writing is in demand. I'd rather read a flat transcript in most cases.
- ams6110 14y agoAnd it doesn't even have to be about really significant stuff. For example our local paper had a story recently about a new website for one of the city services. No mention of: a) What it cost. b) Why it was 12 months late (based on deadline in original RFP). c) Why key requirements specified in the original RFP were not implemented. I mean if I wanted to just read the city's one-sided press release, I would do that. And the paper wonders why nobody subscribes to the print version anymore.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoMore newsworthy would be if it actually came in as promsed, on time and under budget. Only the Onion seems interested in breaking real news like that, however.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoI'd go a bit further than that - I think the most important work for professional journalists involves doing things most of us are too scared to do. Would you get out your camera and start taking photos after My Lai? Be willing to wear being on Nixon's enemies list as a badge of honor? Uncover police corruption? Be shot while working foreign correspondence? Go undercover in the Ku Klux Klan? Publish information about a corporation after they've given you a cease and desist? Maybe you would. And I'd like to think I would too sitting here in the comfort of my office feeling principled, but I'm not sure that means much.
- anigbrowl 14y agoThe Internet is still a leveling bitch on dysfunctional industries. This is hardly a free-for-all; readers will only read long form content, if it’s excellent. I think the major change with the advent the internet is that since one can publish so easily, one cannot count on the presence of an editor to help with things like eliminating stray commas which alter the meaning of one's sentences.
- bpatrianakos 14y agoYeah it's a stray comma but it doesn't alter the meaning of the sentence at all. What am I missing?
- Evbn 14y agoThe grammar Nazi's misuse of "which" in its failed attempt to insult you.
- stan_rogers 14y agoWith the comma, the phrase is equivalent to: "... readers will only read long-form content, and that only if it is excellent." (Forgive me if my usage of that is no longer current. It has been quite a while since I've spent an extended period of time with current formal writing.) The intended meaning was probably something like this: "... readers will only put the effort into reading long-form content if it is excellent."
- aptwebapps 14y agoIsn't that a job for a copy editor? A nice thing to have a but a good regular editor is more important. But I did wonder while reading the piece what Pando Daily's editorial setup is like. Does it bear any resemblance to the process she went through earlier in her career?
- mcantelon 14y agoThis is the most WTF article I've seen in awhile. A shortage of writers? Really?
- mmphosis 14y agoSuddenly everyone wants New Yorker style software. Who is going to develop it?
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoIn our recent reader survey almost every respondent answered why they read PandoDaily with a variation of the following: Long form content that isn’t afraid to call out powerful people. As long as those powerful people aren't your investors, no doubt. http://observer.com/2012/08/conflict-journalism-how-online-media-is-inherently-compromised/?show=all http://observer.com/2012/08/conflict-journalism-how-online-m...
- luu 14y agoWho's going to write it? How about the writers for The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Economist, The Paris Review, etc. I could fill up the length of a long-form article with names of publications that have long-form writing. The real question is, who's going to pay for it? This is like when someone complains that there aren't any good programmers out there, and, P.S., they're paying $25k a year. The article talks about 2000-3000 word articles. At the rate Tumblr's paying, that's $80-$120 per article. Who are they kidding? At those rates, if you're an established writer, you're better off posting to a personal blog and relying on ad revenue. There have been a few magazines (both online and print) that have recently managed to establish themselves as reputable publications that have good writing. What they've done is pay above-market rates to attract good writers. After all, why would you publish in some no name publication instead of The Atlantic? Tumblr seems to be using the opposite strategy.
- mtgx 14y agoAgreed. You could easily find writers for 3000 words articles if you were willing to pay enough to be worth the writer's time that is spent on researching and writing the article.
- msrpotus 14y agoLook at BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post's strategies (at least for reporters and news, not for the entertainment parts of their site). They quickly managed to establish themselves by luring big names who people would want to read. It's probably near-impossible to quickly do the reverse.
- kmfrk 14y agoProPublica are also completely overlooked, even though they do some of the most important reporting out there. It doesn't help that their web design is horrible.
- w1ntermute 14y agoAnother one to check out if you're interested in the soft sciences, culture, & history is Lapham's Quarterly.
- heyitsnick 14y agoThe article it mentions in the preamble i believe is this (it took be a couple of googles): http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/10/tumblr-continues-its-quest-for-original-content-sending-out-a-call-for-paid-freelancers/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/10/tumblr-continues-its-quest-... Bizarre they don't even interlink to their own pando articles.
- barkingcat 14y agoThis is a strange article. I say strange because Sarah Lacy hasn't seem to look into what "New Yorker style" prose / stories look or feel like. The New Yorker is not only a publisher of journalism. It also does short stories, serializations, and I generally consider it an incubator of literary thoughts, methods, and practices the way YCombinator is an incubator of entrepreneurship. Just look at the list of authors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_Yorker_contributors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_Yorker_contribu... Raymond Carver, JD Salinger, Alice Munroe, Vladimir Nabokov, VS Naipaul, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth among others. I don't know if Sarah has looked through the some New Yorker Magazines and actually read the stories. Who's going to found those startups that YCombinator is looking for? Those dedicated, driven, individuals and teams with a single-minded focus to creating a service, a company, a product that people will pay for. Who's going to write New Yorker style stories? Those driven, single-minded, not-immediate-money-driven and creative individuals and teams (writer/editor teams, etc) who will do whatever it takes to push forward the written form. But of course, writing the truth never bought anyone any favours with advertisers.
- rhizome 14y agoWhat makes it stranger is that this story is appearing in a publication, identifying an unserved market, without any hint that they themselves would publish exactly what they say is missing. That is a story I'd like to read, and I might even click on a Pando link to read it.
- TYPE_FASTER 14y agoJournalism and creative writing are not the same thing. Journalism of the form found in the New Yorker requires financial investment, in the form of funding travel, and in the form of funding full-time fact checking. Also, if you think that startups are not-immediate-money-driven, I would disagree.
- barkingcat 14y agothat's why I put not-immediate-money driven in the "writers" section, not the ycombinator/startup section. reading? Yes journalism and creative writing are not the same - so why did the article refer to them as "New Yorker style"? My goal in my comment was to point out that for many New Yorker style pieces of writing, journalism and creative writing blends and cross polinates at that level - for example, Ernest Hemmingway is probably one of the best know "creative writing" novelists - but he is also a journalist for the Toronto Star churning out war stories day in day out. Why does the New Yorker always seem to have the most well written articles and a more nuanced team of editors? Perhaps because the editors don't treat journalism and creative writing any different from the viewpoint of standards. Any good piece of publishable journalism must stand on its own as a piece of creative non-fiction as well. The writer must be writing creatively, as well as journalistically. We're not trying to fill an about.com article here, neither are we writing a blurb that will go in tomorrow's paper. That's how you get Pulitzer winning articles. And that's what's missing in the popular debate about long-form journalism. Everyone talks about journalism, the gathering of news, the interviews. No one talks about advancing the state of writing, using a new point of view in writing about the news, using different words, tenses, perspectives, metaphors and writing techniques. Even though many people want to divorce the two, they go together, hand in hand. Textual journalism without the skill of writing is boring. And we have a lot of boring writers out there. Sara's article just pointed that out. She should learn to write better :)
- ComputerGuru 14y agoFunny. For the past few years, I've been an avid evangelist of the articles written by both New Yorker and Vanity Fair (I'm not seeing any references to this one in the article or here in the comments. Don't balk at the name or genre, they have some of the very best feature articles on the most random topics that I have ever come across). People called me crazy. The Economist has been mentioned here in the comments, but while good, it does not compare in terms of length and sheer quality to the offerings by these two. Apples and oranges, really.
- stevenj 14y agoDoes anyone know what a good long-form writer gets paid?
- 0r3jq4a0j 14y agoThere's a power law distribution, as usual, but it's not very much. IIRC, it generally maxes out $80-$120K, with a select few making more.
- mchafkin 14y agoI would guess that the median New Yorker staff writer gets more like $150-200k, all in (when you add up magazine fees + book advances + speaking fees.) The mean is much higher, because a handful of outliers (heh, Gladwell) make $1 million plus.
- bigthingnext 14y ago"Suddenly everyone..." Hyperbole. I'll believe it when I see it. Even in print, there is only one NewYorker. There are some other mags that are almost comparable, but it's not like there are scores of them to choose from. And how exactly does longform help websites advance their dodgey advertising tactics? It's just my opinion but I honestly think writing on the web was better in the 1990's. These type of websites would likely be criticized today as "walls of text" and for not having enough JavaScript or using enough of the latest CSS or HTML features. The more interesting question to me is the relationship between talented journalists and website developers. They do not necessarily see the world the same way. They operate from different models. What if salaried journalists committed to the craft of writing (not pandering to advertisers or search engines) had the technological empowerment to build high speed, highly organised distribution (publishing) systems without the need to consult with web developers and accept developers' dreams of dodgey pay by the click web advertising? Do I believe there is a disconnect between the two groups? Yes. There are still middlemen in publishing. They are just new middlemen. Alas, they can't afford to pay salaries as their predecessors could. Perhaps what needs to be taught is the technical skill so that ageing journalists schooled in long form can cut out the middleman, start their own publishing businesses and hire the top talent to train the young people entering the field.
- barkingcat 14y agogreat ideas - now we go and do it. Check out http://mozillaopennews.org/ http://mozillaopennews.org/ note - I work for mozilla.
- bigthingnext 14y agoThe idea is good i.e. teach journalists to hack. But there's a conflict of interest. Look who's doing the teaching. Mozilla and Google are in business together. Mozilla != journalists Mozilla == web developers == middleman FAIL. (It's been tried before: Web developers purporting to "help" journalists. The results have not been good.)
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- politician 14y agoObservation: If you're going to write long-form content, use a serif font designed for reading. Changing the font from ars-marquette-web to Georgia immediately and drastically reduced the headache I got when reading this article.
- commanderkeen08 14y agoOn the topic of "who is going to pay for this?!" it's really just a matter of time. This article really strikes a nerve with me because, while I was majoring in English, I questioned the whole point of publishers in today's world. What do I need a publisher for these days? What do I need a record label for? Surely I can just post my content on the internet and presto, right? I forgot what the value of publishing was. Fast forward to today and the noise of content-farming and SEO keyword-stuffing is deafening. And on the topic of long form, rarely have I ever gained anything from 500 words.