Long stories replaced by shorter ones at WSJ

Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review has quantified the decrease in the number of longer stories published in the Wall Street Journal since it was acquired by News Corp.

Chittum writes, “The Wall Street Journal’s page one has long been the standard-bearer for business writing and reporting, at least for newspapers. It took news and turned it into narrative nonfiction, everyday, twice a day, for decades. But Rupert Murdoch made it no secret that he disdained the Journal’s page-one tradition of long-form journalism, and it’s been de-emphasized under his ownership. That’s our qualitative impression, anyway, based on reading the paper, following the tealeaves, and talking to former colleagues.

“I wondered if you could quantify it, though, so I turned to Journal corporate cousin Factiva to put together these charts showing the drop-off in long-form reporting on page one of the paper.

“Here’s the number of A1 stories longer than 1,500 words in the last decade (note that I annualized all the 2011 numbers in this post since we’ve still got eleven-plus weeks left this year):

“Murdoch took over at the end of 2007, defenestrated Marcus Brauchli four months later, and these stories have plunged a stunning 70 percent in the Murdoch era.”

Read more here.