Felix Salmon of Reuters argues Tuesday that the research from Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review showing that the Wall Street Journal is producing fewer longer stories doesn’t mean much in today’s journalism world.
“I read long business and finance stories for a living — that’s my job — and I don’t read six per day, let alone six per day from a single publication. The job of the WSJ is not to overload its readers with many hours’ worth of reading every day. And the current pace, of roughly one long-form front-page story per day, seems much more reasonable to me. (Most readers, of course, won’t even read that — but at least they won’t be completely overwhelmed.)
“At the same time, it’s great that the WSJ is putting lots of important information on its front page in sub-1,500-word form — on top of the ‘What’s News’ briefs. As a news consumer, I don’t even want anything nearly that long — I’m looking to get what I need within a few hundred words at most. US newspaper stories have a lot of water weight, and nearly all of them could stand to lose a few pounds.
“And what of the dramatic fall-off in the really long-form stuff, over 2,500 words? Up until 2007, those managed to make the front page roughly every other day. Then they all but disappeared, and you’ll find maybe one a month at this point.”
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