As an occasional (and increasingly frequent) long-form journalist, I'm not the least bit concerned here. Do we really expect that the most popular journalism in

As an occasional (and increasingly frequent) long-form journalist, I'm not the least bit concerned here. Do we really expect that the most popular journalism in the 21st century will follow a function derived from an outdated form? The 'Regional Dialect Map' was a piece of interactive software. It was interesting. It was engaging. It was sharable. It provided entertainment and, I'd argue, legitimate utility to people who took the two to three minutes to fill it out. It wasn't Pulitzer material, sure, but it was a far cry from one of those "One Weird Trick to Lose Bellyfat" spamvertorials. Traditional journalism has a place in the modern world, but its form is going to evolve over time, and we shouldn't bemoan the inevitability. Everything is not turning into a "Which Star Wars Character Are You?" poll. Everything is not becoming a 132-character sound bite. Some things will. Maybe even most things. And other, newer things will come along. Many of those things will be useful, though they'll take forms that freak us out at first. That the NYT's most popular piece of content was something untraditional is not necessarily cause for alarm. If anything, this piece will be remembered, five to ten years from now, as the primitive ancestor of the much cooler and more engaging things that descended from it.