Newspaper stories are too long

I love that this:

[quote author=Michael Kinsley]And then, finally, comes the end, or “tag.” Few writers can resist the lure of closure—some form of summing-up or leave-taking. Often this is a quote that repeats the central point one last time, perhaps combining it with some rueful irony about the limits of human agency. The Times health-care article does this. “‘Our plan is not perfect, but it is a good start toward providing affordable health care to all Americans,’ said Representative Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon.” The same day’s story in The Post does it too, with a quote too long to quote.[/quote]

is followed by this:

[quote author=Michael Kinsley]On the first day of my first real job in journalism—on the copy desk at the Royal Oak Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan—the chief copy editor said, “Remember, every word you cut saves the publisher money.” At the time, saving the publisher money didn’t strike me as the world’s noblest ideal. These days, for anyone in journalism, it’s more compelling.[/quote]

 

I think I've been hearing "stories are too long" since, oh, when I started in this racket in 1984? Wake me when some self-appointed genius has something else to say.

 

Then you get the whole 'readers don't want jumps' thing. But they want more stories and have them be more indepth. They don't seem to realize that there is only so much space on a page.

 

I love narrative journalism. Love it.

But I couldn't help but chuckle at this passage making fun of the Times lede convention, which I've seen made fun of a lot of other times, as well:

The revolt against pyramid style is also why you get those you’ll-never-guess-what-this-is-about, faux-mystery narrative leads about Martha Lewis, a 57-year-old retired nurse, who was sitting in her living room one day last month watching Oprah when the FedEx delivery man rang her doorbell with an innocent-looking envelope … and so on. (The popularity of this device is puzzling, since the headline—“Oprah Arrested in FedEx Anthrax Plot”—generally gives the story away.)

 

Kinsley just wants his bosses to know that he's on board with this Internet thing, for damn sure.

 

I think I've posted this before. I've sent it out to friends in the industry. I've printed it out and hung it on the bulletin board at work. But every time this stuff comes up I think of this quote from Chuck Klosterman:

"I worked in newspapers for eight years, right when that industry was starting to disintegrate. As such, we spent a lot of time talking with focus groups, forever trying to figure out what readers wanted. And here is what they wanted: everything. They wanted shorter stories, but also longer stories. They wanted more international news, but also more local news. And more in-depth reporting. And more playful arts coverage. And less sports. And more sports. And maybe some sports on the front page. When it comes to mass media, it's useless to ask people what they want; nobody knows what they want until they have it."

 

As with any question of story length, this is an editing problem, but not in the way that may seem obvious. When a story is too long, it's not always because an editor didn't cut enough. Sometimes it's exactly the opposite.

At my place, I see stories get loaded up with questions for the reporters to address during the editing process. Editors insist more information get added to a story -- sometimes necessarily so, in order to provide context and clarity. But in many cases, when you do that it significantly adds to the length. So you start with a run of the mill story that was turned in at 16 or 18 inches, and all of a sudden it becomes 25 because of all the crap the editor asked.

I had an editor once who never let anything go more than 19 inches because the most significant story he ever wrote ran at that length. So he figured you didn't need more than that for the stupid-ass prep football game you covered. Pretty good logic, I think.

 

Wait. You have an editing process?

 

100 percent disagree. They might not think of it in terms of those words, but they know what happened in the game when they pick up the paper. They want opinion (analysis) and to learn something they don't know (depth).

If they're buying the paper at all.

 

I used to get frustrated about the story lengths that newspapers would ask for. Then I realized that the story lengths were fine. I just wasn't a good fit for newspapers.

 

Yeah, well, we half-ass it as much as possible ... just enough to keep up appearances, you know.

 

This is exactly why we never run a picture with any of our high school gamers.

It would be over the 800-word limit.