Maybe we have too much long-form journalism

Ta-Nahesi Coates has a post over at The Atlantic detailing his take on the “Long form journalism doesn’t work on the web” discussion that’s been floating around the Internets for the last few days.

Following up on a post by Matt Yglesias, Coates says:

I’d agree that knowing exactly who is reading you is a revealing experience. I’d also agree that, in the sense of generating constant repeating eye-balls, long-form isn’t working on the web. But as a guy who’s worked on the web, and in print, I’d back this analysis up and add something else–long-form isn’t working particularly well in magazines.

There is a point that consistently gets lost in all the screeching about the death of print journalism. In their traditional business model, for-profit magazines and newspapers that contain advertising exist for one reason only: to put those ads in front of readers’ eyes.

Print publications have always told their advertisers “We have a circulation of X million, so all of those people will see your ad.” Based on that, they charge accordingly for ads.

As Coates and Yglesias point out, though, just because I subscribe to a magazine doesn’t mean that I’m going to see all the ads a particular issue contains. Hell, I might not see any of them, and to Coates’ point, it’s not even clear how many of the articles I will read.

Is it possible to port the magazine model of long-form journalistic writing directly over to a web site? If the desired outcome is to keep bringing in the same amount of money, the answer is clearly no. The more interesting question here is whether it even makes sense to try. If journalists and other writers are really looking for the best way to get what they have to say out to reader, then perhaps the better strategy is to use the analytics and metrics that web-based delivery provides in order to figure out how people are actually consuming and using the content that’s being written.

In other words, instead of wondering whether online journalism can sustain the 30,000 word article, maybe we ought to be looking at whether we need to be writing so many 30,000 word articles.