What is the longest article you ever wrote?

[valpo87]

I had just completed a feature article about a Soldier being reunited with the specialized search dog he was team with for two tours in Afghanistan and how the dog is like family. That sort of feature.

When I write, I don't worry about things like the word count until I get to proofreading and correcting my own typos before sending to the editors. Find out I had typed about 1,600+ words. Another reporter said that number is rare for any type of newspaper article.

So out of curiosity, what was the longest article you have wrote? What was the word count after the article was published?

 

[Football_Bat]

I love doing a couple of long pieces a year. For me they're the most fun to do. I don't know what the word count is, but the column length I shoot for generally goes from 100-120 inches.

 

[silvercharm]

I had just completed a feature article about a Soldier being reunited with the specialized search dog he was team with for two tours in Afghanistan and how the dog is like family. That sort of feature.

When I write, I don't worry about things like the word count until I get to proofreading and correcting my own typos before sending to the editors. Find out I had typed about 1,600+ words. Another reporter said that number is rare for any type of newspaper article.

So out of curiosity, what was the longest article you have wrote? What was the word count after the article was published?

Oh, I wouldn't call that rare. That's in the neighborhood of 45-50 inches, depending on your paper's web width. Not as common today as 10-20 years ago, but if it's well written and interesting, still has a place in today's newspaper. More often that not, though, you'll see writers empty their notebook of quotes into a story, because they don't know how to put together a well-written long piece, and think it's worth the inches. It's not.

 

[valpo87]

I had just completed a feature article about a Soldier being reunited with the specialized search dog he was team with for two tours in Afghanistan and how the dog is like family. That sort of feature.

When I write, I don't worry about things like the word count until I get to proofreading and correcting my own typos before sending to the editors. Find out I had typed about 1,600+ words. Another reporter said that number is rare for any type of newspaper article.

So out of curiosity, what was the longest article you have wrote? What was the word count after the article was published?

Oh, I wouldn't call that rare. That's in the neighborhood of 45-50 inches, depending on your paper's web width. Not as common today as 10-20 years ago, but if it's well written and interesting, still has a place in today's newspaper. More often that not, though, you'll see writers empty their notebook of quotes into a story, because they don't know how to put together a well-written long piece, and think it's worth the inches. It's not.

Quality over quantity. I wouldn't write that much if it was all quote-heavy.

 

[outofplace]

Inch counts can be a useful guideline, but a good editor knows when to ignore them and allow a piece the room it needs.

I co-wrote a package a year or two into my career. The mainbar was over 120 inches before we started editing, but it was broken up into sections. We tied various aspects of the subject into the stories of the people we interviewed. The other reporter and our SE sat down and cut about 20 inches from it, apparently fighting the entire time (I was out covering something. I also think the SE just didn't want to deal with both of us at the same time.)

Because it was going to start on A1 and jump inside, it had to go through our Metro editor. He was a rumpled, old school curmudgeon and a very well respected journalist. His first reaction was to lose his mind when he found out it was 100 inches. My SE just calmly told him to read it. The Metro editor read it and when he was done, he admitted he could't find a single place to cut and he barely touched the thing. That piece won a couple of awards, but I think I was more proud that the curmudgeon let us get away with a 100-inch mainbar when he had been dead-set against it.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

Not a fan of subheds. Stories are not particularly meant to be told in vignettes.

 

[Batman]

I think mine was around 70 inches (in the neighborhood of 2,500 words) about a decade ago, when we had a much wider web width. Probably would be 100-plus inches these days. Hell, these days most AP gamers come across as 30 inches or longer, when they used to be less than 20.

Honestly, the stories that are longest are usually the easiest to write. You get in a groove, have loads of material, know you have something special to tell and a special way to tell it, and the words just flow. When I'm writing those stories, I can be at 800 words without blinking an eye.
The 15-inch prep gamer you're trying to scratch out from an incomplete voice mail and half a box score is way more difficult.

 

[ColdCat]

I think mine was around 70 inches (in the neighborhood of 2,500 words) about a decade ago, when we had a much wider web width. Probably would be 100-plus inches these days. Hell, these days most AP gamers come across as 30 inches or longer, when they used to be less than 20.

Honestly, the stories that are longest are usually the easiest to write. You get in a groove, have loads of material, know you have something special to tell and a special way to tell it, and the words just flow. When I'm writing those stories, I can be at 800 words without blinking an eye.
The 15-inch prep gamer you're trying to scratch out from an incomplete voice mail and half a box score is way more difficult.

Hell the 15-inch game from a 40-point blowout you covered is pretty hard too.

My record is 2,500 which I think worked out to 67 inches. With a couple breakout boxes and a few photos, the jump took up an entire page

 

[awriter]

Not a fan of subheds. Stories are not particularly meant to be told in vignettes.

I don't like them in shorter stories or columns, but I have no problem with them in big takeouts. They can help break the story into chapters and break up long blocks of text.

 

[outofplace]

Not a fan of subheds. Stories are not particularly meant to be told in vignettes.

I don't like them in shorter stories or columns, but I have no problem with them in big takeouts. They can help break the story into chapters and break up long blocks of text.

Exactly. It's not something I'd use often, but it fit perfectly for that particular project. If you're going to write a piece that long, throwing it all together in one big mass of gray doesn't work.

Fart's statement about telling stories in vignettes is right there with putting a limit on the length of all stories. It's not a terrible guideline for a newspaper story, but you have to know when to toss it out. The other writer and the two editors I worked with on that project were smart enough to know that.

 

[93Devil]

I wrote 100 plus inches for a football tab before, but that was breaking out by position.

****, some high school basketball roundups would push that as well if you give 4-5 inches to 20-25 games from a busy night.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I was a mediocre writer, and I would've sucked out loud if I hadn't stopped at 18-ish inches.

However, I was never a fan of newspaper "writers." In my experience, those who tried to write that much did so to take the focus off of subpar reporting.

 

[Here me roar]

Did a big blow out on disordered eating patterns in athletes many a moons ago. It was the center spread and then jumped to two full pages inside. It was a lot of words

Also did a diary-type story with a hs football player who was being heavily recruited. I met with him once a week, from August until signing day. There was short piece explaining the process, the diary itself which was pretty big and then a column that outlined how I approached it and how it impacted me. Many words. Not as much as the eating one.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Just checked.

One-day feature, I think the piece that I believe to be my longest was 2,900 words.

Now, I wrote a two-day feature, which was really a one-day feature broken into two parts, that checked in at around 3,600 words.

I had a feature that finished really high in APSE that was 2,485 words. (Not trying to toot my horn - I bring that up as some evidence that a piece can be both long and considered good, a contention that gets some resistance in this business.)

I always wanted to be a magazine writer anyway, but just screwed up my path.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I had a three day series that was over 200 inches. I co-wrote a series that ran over eight days and was over 500 inches total.

I've written a few "profile" pieces that were 100-120 inches. These were usually instances where I spent the week with someone or something like that. They were by far my favorite kind of stories to do, especially if they didn't need the story turned around super quickly.

 

[Songbird]

150 inches broken up over 2 weeks (weekly paper). Lots of quotes but that's how I wanted to present the story because they were from former players and coaches about a local hoops coach who was in the hospital, again. At the time there were rumors he was on his last legs. He lived another 2 years but the story, one of my first at the paper, let readers know what they were getting out of the new SE.

I wrote a lot of long stories at that paper.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I bring that up as some evidence that a piece can be both long and considered good, a contention that gets some resistance in this business.

Of course something can be long and good.

I make the contention, however, that you'll get WAY more eyes on a 15-incher than a 200-incher.

Many newspaper readers won't make the commitment to read 200 inches, regardless of quality or subject matter.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

My first paper did a lot of project writing because they were obsessed with winning awards. I loved those assignments, but not when they happened during the season. "In addition to writing a lead, notebook and sidebar every day this week, can you also give us a 60-inch feature for Sunday?"

 

[Dick Whitman]

I bring that up as some evidence that a piece can be both long and considered good, a contention that gets some resistance in this business.

Of course something can be long and good.

I make the contention, however, that you'll get WAY more eyes on a 15-incher than a 200-incher.

Many newspaper readers won't make the commitment to read 200 inches, regardless of quality or subject matter.

The APSE-winning one was very widely read because it was pretty juicy. I got a lot of feedback on the 2,900-word feature, but it was mostly from the subject's particular sports community, which is rabid. (He had recently died.)

But, yeah, I suspect that general readership on it wasn't huge, particularly since it ran on Christmas Day. What was nice was that I was receiving emails about it weeks after the fact, due to the magic of the Internet keeping it alive.

 

[reformedhack]

Longest print piece I've ever written was 5,000 words, along with multimedia bonus components, for a travel magazine.

Longest newspaper piece I've ever written was 72 inches, or about 2,800 words, broken into distinct but related chunks. That was nearly 20 years ago ... I would use a much different approach today.