{"id":521155,"date":"2022-12-04T23:15:54","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T20:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/is-long-form-journalism-dying-a-five-minute-read\/"},"modified":"2022-12-04T23:15:54","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T20:15:54","slug":"is-long-form-journalism-dying-a-five-minute-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/is-long-form-journalism-dying-a-five-minute-read\/","title":{"rendered":"#Is long-form journalism dying? A five-minute read"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a25e85187594\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a25e85187594\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/is-long-form-journalism-dying-a-five-minute-read\/#Is_long-form_journalism_dying_A_five-minute_read\" >Is long-form journalism dying? A five-minute read<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Is_long-form_journalism_dying_A_five-minute_read\"><\/span>Is long-form journalism dying? A five-minute read<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/wapo-building_051619getty_long-form.jpg?w=900\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Amid relentless teletype buzz of bad <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>, the newspaper industry <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/media\/2022\/11\/30\/washington-post-magazine-ends\/\">printed an obituar<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/media\/2022\/11\/30\/washington-post-magazine-ends\/\">y this week<\/a> for one of its last traditional sources of long-read journalism: the Washington Post Sunday magazine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pressed for an explanation by her staff, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee blamed the magazine\u2019s demise on \u201ceconomic headwinds,\u201d according to unnamed staffers who attended a grim postmortem.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr1_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>The final issue of The Washington Post Magazine hits driveways on Christmas Day. In the new year, only two Sunday magazines will remain in the legacy newspaper business, one published by the quasi-national New York Times, the other by a proud but diminished Boston Globe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To industry observers, the Sunday magazine is an artifact of a bygone era, a prop in an ancient weekend ritual acted out at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and a Sunday paper as thick as a phone book, both now casualties of the Internet age.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A generation ago, when newspaper subscribers read stories mostly in print, the Sunday magazine loomed as a career-c<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ing destination for any journalist, an outlet for some of the industry\u2019s most ambitious work. The Post, Times, Miami Herald and Baltimore Sun, among others, won Pulitzer Prizes for pieces published in Sunday magazines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The death of the Post magazine, and the layoff of its 10 employees, \u201chas business implications, but I think it has a lot of craft implications as well,\u201d said Andrew Beaujon, a senior editor at Washingtonian magazine and former <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> reporter for the Poynter Institute. \u201cBecause they\u2019ve gotten rid of the people who know how to craft a magazine story, as opposed to a newspaper story.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to the Post\u2019s in-house report, Buzbee did not offer the magazine staff new jobs at the paper.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the Post account, Bill Grueskin, a Columbia Journalism School professor and former newspaper editor, noted that the Sunday magazine is \u201cless of a priority now, given the infinite space available online.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr2_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>The internet allows journalists to write and publish stories of any length, anytime, rendering the magazine format obsolete, at least for newspaper publishers. A long-form journalist can publish a 10,000-word story at no additional cost than a 1,000-word story, in terms of ink and newsprint and lost advertising space.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But that doesn\u2019t mean people will read it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With most journalism online, editors and publishers now know exactly how long the average reader spends scrolling through the average story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr3_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>It is a cruel calculus. At the end of 2020, according to Pew Research, the average visitor to a top newspaper website spent less than two minutes there, down from more than 2.5 minutes in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Long-form news articles \u201care really resource-intensive,\u201d Beaujon said, \u201cand either they hit or they don\u2019t. And if they don\u2019t hit, you\u2019ve really blown it.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When long reads hit, they hit big. A 2021 Washingtonian piece by Jessica Sidman, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonian.com\/2021\/02\/19\/trump-hotel-employees-tell-all-what-it-was-really-like-serving-right-wing-elite\/\">pulling back the cur<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonian.com\/2021\/02\/19\/trump-hotel-employees-tell-all-what-it-was-really-like-serving-right-wing-elite\/\">tain on the local Trump Hotel<\/a>, \u201cwas our best-read piece for a long time,\u201d Beaujon recalled, with more than 1 million page views.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr4_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Another celebrated story, penned by Elizabeth Bruenig and published in 2018 by the Washington Post as <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2018\/opinions\/arlington-texas\/\">\u201cW<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2018\/opinions\/arlington-texas\/\">hat do we owe her now?<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2018\/opinions\/arlington-texas\/\">\u201d<\/a>, typifies the new face of long-form journalism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bruenig reported and wrote the piece, on a sexual assault victim from her Texas hometown, for the Post website. It ran with vivid photos and moving images, a multimedia online melange with a list of cinematic credits at the end.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t have any idea that it was going to be in print, actually,\u201d she recalled. When the story took off, she said, editors arranged to print it in the paper: not in the magazine, but as a special section. It <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pulitzer.org\/finalists\/elizabeth-bruenig-washington-post\">became a 2019 Puli<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pulitzer.org\/finalists\/elizabeth-bruenig-washington-post\">tzer finalist<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of readers followed Bruenig\u2019s story to the end. But that level of site-visitor loyalty is rare.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another Pew study, from 2016, found that readers spent around a minute thumbing through the average short-form news article on their cellphones. With long-form articles, reader engagement jumped to two minutes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But for most long-form journalism, two minutes won\u2019t get a reader anywhere near the end.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe question is, how do you get people to hang in with you?\u201d Bruenig said. \u201cI know that people have a lot of options. And I\u2019m trying to get them to read a story rather than watch a video.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Longform journalists can always fall back on traditional publishing, running stories in old-fashioned print newspapers. But those options have limited reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to the latest figures from the Alliance for Audited Media, only nine U.S. newspapers now enjoy average daily print circulations more than 100,000. They are the Wall Street Journal (697,493), New York Times (329,781), USA Today (159,233), Washington Post (159,040), New York Post (146,649), Los Angeles Times (142,382), Chicago Tribune (106,156), Minneapolis Star Tribune (103,808) and Tampa Bay Times (102,266).\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr5_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Fifteen years ago, by contrast, the top three papers all <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.infoplease.com\/culture-entertainment\/journalism-literature\/top-100-newspapers-united-states\">had circ<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.infoplease.com\/culture-entertainment\/journalism-literature\/top-100-newspapers-united-states\">ulations more than 1 million<\/a>, and several others topped 500,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Overall daily newspaper circulation has dwindled to around 25 million, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/journalism\/fact-sheet\/newspapers\/\">Pew reports<\/a>, down from about 51 million in 2007. Daily circulation peaked at 63 million in 1984.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The corps of newsroom employees has shrunk by half since the late 2000s, Pew reports. Newspapers are closing at a rate of roughly two a week, according to research by Northwestern University.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince 2005, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025,\u201d the university\u2019s <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu\/research\/state-of-local-news\/report\/\">Local News Initiative rep<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu\/research\/state-of-local-news\/report\/\">orted this year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr6_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Most of the good news in newspapering is online. The top 50 newspapers reaped 14 million unique website visitors in the last quarter of 2020, up from 10 million in 2015, according to Pew.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the 2010s, digital advertising more than doubled as a share of all newspaper ad revenue, from 17 percent to 39 percent. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ad revenue rewards page views. How much time the reader spends with a story matters. But it may not matter enough to justify the effort and expense of a long-form story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re a hits business,\u201d Beaujon said. \u201cIt\u2019s like Hollywood.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr7_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>In recent years, nonprofits such as ProPublica have swept in to help newspapers deliver long reads. An innovative newcomer, California Sunday Magazine, launched in 2014, publishing long-form stories in homage to a vanishing breed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>California Sunday <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poynter.org\/reporting-editing\/2021\/california-sunday-magazine-closed-last-year-it-just-won-a-pulitzer\/\">won a Pulitzer<\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poynter.org\/reporting-editing\/2021\/california-sunday-magazine-closed-last-year-it-just-won-a-pulitzer\/\"> Prize in feature writing<\/a> in 2021. Eight months earlier, the magazine had ceased publication. \u00a0\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/media\/3760391-is-long-form-journalism-dying-a-five-minute-read\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is long-form journalism dying? A five-minute read Amid relentless teletype buzz of bad news, the newspaper industry printed an obituary this week for one of its last traditional sources of long-read journalism: the Washington Post Sunday magazine.\u00a0\u00a0 Pressed for an explanation by her staff, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee blamed the magazine\u2019s demise on \u201ceconomic headwinds,\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":521156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/wapo-building_051619getty_long-form.jpg?w=1280","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[134418,134447,90482,40445,136753,134446],"class_list":["post-521155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-congress-blog","tag-energy-and-environment","tag-house","tag-media","tag-sally-buzbee","tag-sunday-talk-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}