Alan Mutter makes a point that I’ve been hearing editors make most of my career: Most newspaper stories are too long.
I’m sure he’s right. But some newspaper stories are too short. And story length is way down the list of problems facing the newspaper business.
I remember when I was at the Des Moines Register, Jim Gannon, who I believe was executive editor at the time, decreed that no story could be longer than he was tall. He was 5’10”, as I recall, so a story couldn’t be longer than 70 inches. 70 inches! Register reporters were writing so long that Gannon’s idea of introducing some discipline was to limit stories to 70 inches (and newspaper columns were wider then than they are today).
When I was at the Kansas City Times, Editor Joe McGuff tried to hold stories to no more than 35 inches. But, he assured us (when President Ronald Reagan was in the news for defying Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi‘s “Line of Death” in the Gulf of Sidra) the limit was not a line of death; reporters could exceed it if they made the case to McGuff and got permission for a particular story.
At various times, editors have restricted jumps from page one, either forbidding them entirely or limiting them to one or two stories a day.
I support Mutter, Gannon, McGuff and lots of editors past and present in their quest to introduce more discipline in journalists’ writing. I freely acknowledge that many of my blog posts run too long, without the limited space of print and without editors to help me trim an extraneous word here and a redundant paragraph there.
But frankly, the problem and the challenge (whether in my blog or in a newspaper or on a news website) is not how long the story is, but whether it’s worth the length. I can’t recall ever getting more reader response than I did from two stories that were 70 inches (about the rescue of twins who nearly froze) and 200 inches long (about four people in a famous photograph of a World War II homecoming). Those stories didn’t work because readers want long stories. They connected with readers because they were two of the best stories of my career and people enjoy reading good stories however long they are.
Good stories don’t have to be long. I’m not sure either the twins story or the homecoming story were as good as Roy Wenzl‘s mystery child story or Brady Dennis‘ “After the sky fell” story, neither of which would top 20 inches in most newspapers. The length of a story isn’t what matters; it’s how well the story connects with readers.
Longreads and Grantland are carving out their digital niches based on their faith in people’s interest in long, well-written stories. The Atlantic doesn’t shy from presenting long stories that are worth the time to read. I’m confident that journalists and news organizations will continue writing good, long stories at the same time as newspapers fill their precious dwindling space with too many long stories that don’t merit the space.
I absolutely support Mutter’s call to tell stories with tables, charts, infographics and other tools when those are more appropriate storytelling tools than strings of paragraphs. The New York Times Snowfall project engaged readers successfully by using words and multimedia tools effectively. So did Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Pearls Before Breakfast, which deftly inserted video clips into the text of a long narrative.
We have lots of data about how well stories connect. We know which stories readers are most likely to share with their friends and which they read for long times and which they skim quickly. We should learn from that data and try to write the types of stories that people are going to want to read and share. That’s way more important than worrying about how long or short a story is.
The Buttry Diary 
All truths are provisional. No formula works in all cases. So stories are too long and stories are too short and both statements are true. What matters is the awareness of the moving parts in both statements, and the constant, roving, annoying weighing of their value across fluid situations. Also known as “editing.”
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Excellent points, Dan!
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I wonder if young journalists today read Elements of Style by Strunk/White?
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I think journalists have always (for my career at least) been more inclined to read the AP Stylebook. But I still see Strunk & White in some newsrooms.
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I found your blog post too long, so I skimmed it once I saw your point.
But I’ll elaborate, if you want to keep reading.
I got my early training at UPI where 300 words (about 8 inches) was the preferred length for most stories. I got good at it. When I moved to the tabloid NYPost, the general rule was 10 inches, unless it was the Story of the Day.
All doable.
At Bloomberg — where time, not space, was the key element — stories were supposed to be fast, adding detail with each update.
At the National Law Journal, a tabloid weekly, I edited long-form daily front-page thumbsuckers and shorter inside news stories.
At the Dayton Daily News, its Cox parent decreed limited jumps off the front page. That arbitrarily truncated stories that cried for more detail. Local staff tried to work around that. Or they did day-late followups.
Now I’m at a paper where there’s often space, but it’s often tight. We can put longer stories online.
Once, early on at the New York Post, I asked my Aussie metro editor how long a story should be. He advised, “Write to length, mate.” I got the drift.
As somebody pointed out — I went back to reread — “people enjoy reading good stories however long they are.”
Incidentally, one of the best new entries on the Web is 2paragraphs at http://2paragraphs.com/ Recommended highly.
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Excellent points, Hal. Each of those publications had a different audience and understood it well. The thumbsuckers in the National Law Journal would never cut it in the New York Post, just as the headless-body-found-in-topless-bar stories from the Post would never work in the Law Journal.
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I absolutely loved that NYT avalanche story. The story and the presentation were spectacular. I think it’s the best use of multimedia storytelling I’ve seen from a newspaper website.
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[…] contenuti per i quali debba valere la pena della lettura: è il punto di vista sull’argomento di Steve Buttry, che suggerisce di concentrare l’attenzione sul valore dell’articolo in sé, piuttosto […]
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[…] and that will include longform articles that the author wants to define as slow journalism. Steve Buttry suggests focusing on the value of the article itself, its contents and the needs of the public […]
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Often I find them short on objectivity, details and the truth. Other than that, they’re just right.
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Right you are, but general readers skip the lengthy stories if surface is more elaborated than the core values.
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[…] Newspaper stories are too long, except when they’re too short. […]
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In the age of the Internet, it is an unfortunate fact that many are subjected to memes and one-liners and find anything that stretches beyond a paragraph too long. I agree with you though, it’s really not about the length, it’s about content.
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Long or short, one should write only as long as they have something of value to say, afterwhich they should stop writing.
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I think what it comes down to is a story is only as useful as the reader deems it to be. Another take on the customer is always right with the caveat that, in the case of a publisher, you can shape the customer (to an extent).
A crucial headline can be missed if the writer takes too much space to illustrate the circumstances surrounding the headline.
Conversely, conveying a complex argument in a short snippet will only result in calls of naivete.
One point I wanted to add – story quantity is, I believe, an important concern that hasn’t really been addressed by newspapers. Publishing hundreds of sensational, yet inconsequential, stories makes it very easy to lose sight of the few that have some impact.
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And then you have the internet which has changed this measurement to a more abstract one: that of the human attention span… which has changed inches to seconds! Great post… my post today talks about why I’m hesitantly shortening my blog posts. How timely, eh? Thank you! – Renee
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To illustrate the length problem using a different medium, I’m reminded of the scene from “Amadeus” where the king tells Mozart that his symphony has “too many notes.”
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I just wrote a blog post and I was hesitant to publish it because I felt it was too short. I had nothing else to say and as you pointed out, readers don’t seem to mind. In actual fact, I always check the length of a blog post before reading because if it’s too long, I just won’t sit and read it. A book is another story, but I feel that blog posts shouldn’t be so long.
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People have incredibly short attention spans these days and… oh look, shiny!
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I think it has a lot to do with attention spans. Very few of my friends (25 years old) read ANYTHING anymore, let alone long news articles. I’m in my last year at university studying journalism and we are taught to keep our writing as short and concise as possible. They encourage the use of bulleted points, short paragraphs, bold text, etc — anything that will capture attention. Sad, really.
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One my college English professors would assign a paper each week with a new topic. Beyond that, guidelines were slim. When asked how long the assignment should be, his answer was always the same. “Long enough to be good.”
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There seems to be no “universal formula” but I agree with Britt M, our attention spans are shorter. We want instant gratification… and we want it now 😉
Tallulah
http://choosesimplicitydotorg.wordpress.com/
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Some stories are actually — imagine — complex. They demand space/length to tell them properly, with multiple sources, anecdotes, themes, layers and subtlety. If you are an experienced journalist, you know well that most stories are hopelessly truncated for space, when the “truth” is more complex.
In an era of sound bites and 300-word internet “stories” I see tremendous hunger for length. My proof? I write 2,500 word business stories for The New York Times. The last three have been the 3rd or 4th most-emailed and read of the entire Sunday paper. If people have no time or interest, as popular “wisdom” has it, these stats would not be possible.
I spent a year at the NY Daily News, writing tight and short. Great training. But given my druthers, (and thank heaven for the real estate my Times editor gives me,) I’d much rather find and tell a great story in detail.
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My final semester of undergrad I was challenged to compress the entirety of my studies into a 140-character Tweet. Generation NOW is revolutionizing the news mediums that we are familiar with. The most revalant problem I have seen is that this completely dismisses all complexity from the issues that are being presented. We like the short and simple, but in my opinion this is how facts get mixed up and stories are published prematurely.
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I totally agree with you about the relationship between the quality of the story and the readership. If I am pressed for time, I will bookmark a long story and read it later when I have more time but I do not waste my time reading bad-quality stuff even if it is short and I have a lot of time to spare.
Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed!
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Some blog posts are too long, some too short your’s is just perfect ^^
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There is content across so many mediums today, begging for attention. Also, with increasing work pressure and time constraints, I find (at least in India) that the younger generation does not have the patience to read a long piece.
I have worked with a wire agency where brevity is key and I find that quite often one can squeeze into a very short article all that is actually relevant. Didn’t Blaise Pascal say “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”?
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There are horses for courses Steve.
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When you write a story, it is also about the kind of audience. It is not the length, it is the essence and substance of the story. Like you said, if you can connect with the audience then it is a good story. A story should read like a good story – a well written script. Some stories never seem to get old and die, like Schndlers List or was it Schilndlers Ark?
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I believe it’s the content that makes a difference. You might need lots of words to express a concept and you just cannot shorten it. However, since you can’t do a thing about its lenght, you might aswell make it more interesting or break its visual effect by using bold text (I do this regardless of the lenghts but for different reasons).
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boring.
thanks.
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For what it’s worth, my own opinion is that (as a rule of thumb) story length should be linked to factual content – I understand the US newspaper perspective is to affect a (somewhat false) neutral position, but in the UK the majority of newspaper stories tend to be pretty fact-lite with a lot of bias and spin padding them out, even the short ones.
…
A case in point being the presidential/constitutional crisis in Egypt late last year: the right-wing press, particularly the Times and Telegraph, focused on the fact of the Muslim Brotherhood’s arguably anti-democratic agenda and the nature of the presidential decree, the Guardian focused on the supreme court’s Mubarak-appointed make up and their previous efforts to ‘harm’ the nascent democracy.
Both approaches missed out salient (some might say ‘necessary’) points entirely in favour of pursuing a finger-pointing agenda. Bizarrely, the longer the article the less actual information (possibly the space was needed for the editorialising…).
In his later years, Alistair Cooke criticised the trend towards investigative journalism rather than simply journalism, because it carried the implication that someone was necessarily to blame in any given circumstance and that as a corollary journalists were impliedly encouraged to build and present a case (even at the cost of ‘doing a lawyer’ and ignoring unhelpful or contradictiory facts altogether).
I’d be interested in hearing your perspective on this, given your extensive experience.
Like your blog by the way, very informative. So, uh, thanks..
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The saddest thing is cutting your story because there happens to be a large ad on the page that day. Great post, and just the right length, too!!
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Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
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DrFrood: “In his later years, Alistair Cooke criticised the trend towards investigative journalism rather than simply journalism, because it carried the implication that someone was necessarily to blame in any given circumstance and that as a corollary journalists were impliedly encouraged to build and present a case (even at the cost of ‘doing a lawyer’ and ignoring unhelpful or contradictiory facts altogether).”
This is one of the pitfalls of being an investigative journalist: There are good guys and bad guys and we’ll tell you who’s who. But some stories have a narrative that points out key actions by people that can have adverse consequences to others. In an investigative mode, when done poorly, motives can be questioned without proof and contradictory facts ignored (or they become parenthetical).
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Hal,
Thanks for your comment, but I’ll stick up for investigative journalism. The techniques required to find information for a story change when people expressly don’t want you to get that information (and sometimes break the law to keep it secret). You rarely do that kind of journalism without an investigative mindset. You do need to guard against the tendencies you note, but the investigative journalists I’ve worked with have been pretty diligent about protecting the integrity of their journalism. The benefits of investigative journalism are well worth its flaws. We need more of it.
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Agreed. My key phrase: “when done poorly.” Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many examples of that.
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Most of these comments are too long, except when they’re too short.
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I remember when I was a reporter at a small weekly, one of those crappy free papers that was just a bunch of ads with a few stories in between moved into town. Once, the editor of the paper was covering the same meeting I was. Her story was EPIC. It was really ridiculous. She made no choices whatsoever about what parts of the meeting were worth covering and just listed nearly every word said, It was absurd! At the same time, I’m constantly finding tiny little articles with virtually no information in them on the webpages of local news outlets. They often raise more questions than they answer. Journalism is in a very strange place.
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Yes most definitely. Publishing as a whole is in a very strange place as it is in transition, some would say free fall. Social historians will describe this time as wild transition, everything all over the map, too short, too long, MIA. Real truth about this time is found in the best fiction, I think! As long as publishers can afford to print, e-print fiction.
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One thing that worries me in today’s time is no newspapers at all. That’s way more important than worrying about how long or short a story is, right?
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I could write a long comment, but one would argue this one is too short.
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Same with poetry. To long or to short depending on the reader. I remember the line of death. We crossed it.
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Hmmm…how long should a good story be? How long is a piece of string…
Remember also that (particularly for regional newspapers) advertising often dictates story length, given that certain sections of the page are always set aside for ads.
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Even beyond the newspaper medium, I agree people will sit down and pay attention to finish a good story. It helps if the story is trim and lean, without extra padding. However, many popular films run close or beyond three hours, and people stay for the end. Current books that have stayed on the Best Seller lists run a plethora of pages that most editors would discount. Our culture might be moving towards the fast-paced, but there’s always room we make in our day for a good story.
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I couldn’t agree more. It really has nothing to do with the length of the story, but is the story worth reading?… Is what is there enough to make it good, and not too much so as to make it not good? It’s the challenge for any writer, and what they teach in journalism school. Unfortunately, not all reporters and editors seem to have picked up on this.
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I fully agree. I think this is something that bloggers should also be mindful of. Sometimes the best posts can be conveyed in a few words, while at other times the best posts require more words. There is no formula–it’s whatever is needed to make the reader understand, appreciate and eventually share that story with others!….I also believe that when you write for your audience, you get a better response than when you write to meet a word count (or to get more views in the case of online media)!…Congrats on being FP! 🙂
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Agreed, as a writer for a newspaper, I try to focus on the solutions rather than the problems. Keeps them short!
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I enjoyed this post and thought it was the perfect length. good job! I agree with many of your points. I read NYT on my iPad, which is wonderful for reducing paper in my teeny abode, but it also leads to much scanning and less real reading. When I do read an entire story it’s usually fulfilling. Sadly there aren’t enough investigative pieces in the digital NYT era. Where is coverage of the recent horrendous ferry accident near Wall Street, for instance. One week after the incident I searched for one piece…had someone been texting? improper mechanical checks? what?? nada. Sorry, I fear my comment is far too long!
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I’m a firm believer in “Content is King”! I don’t think that there is a perfect length for a newspaper story as it always depends on the story itself. If the story is good and if the writer is capable of keeping me attached to the story, then I don’t mind a long article – I actually enjoy it! I worked in the past as a freelancer for a German newspaper and we also had sometimes a set column length, so you had to write as much as they told you to which was sometimes a real shame…
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[…] second article come from Steven Buttry: “Newspaper stories are too long, except when they’re too short.” Buttry focuses on changes to copy in newspapers online and says that the “challenge (whether […]
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Terrific post and absolutely true. A good story tells itself and takes whatever length it needs to tell it. As a kid, I read about how Alfred Hitchcock said everything in a story needs to have a purpose. If you can remove part of it or a character and still tell the story, then it serves no purpose. Even today in my column writing, I follow that advice and make sure everything I include serves a purpose — whether to relay information, set the pace or the stage. If it doesn’t do any of those things, it’s out.
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Great point. When I was trained in journalism we were constantly told to make articles shorter, sometimes at the expense of engaging informative writing. As a reader I find that an article is too brief to answer all my questions, or does not have a beginning, middle and end leaves me feeling frustrated and dissatisfied after reading it. For this reason I choose the in depth articles of The Independent and The Guardian rather than The Sun and The Daily Mail (not just because The Sun has an average reading age of 7).
A story should stick to the point but it should be allowed enough length to capture and hold a reader’s interest. Graphics can help with this but ultimately it’s the words that do the talking.
http://literarylydi.wordpress.com
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Word count … the first book I wrote I simply wrote – if that makes sense … the next one I felt obliged to make it particular word count to meet industry standards … thing is, I agree with you – there are stories worthy of length just like there are books … then there’s all the filler crap that gets added just to make a length … blah, blah, blah. I’ve said enough – good post!
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Yep, i like to keep all my blog posts to around 200 words or less.
Keep it simple and short, otherwise people tend to drift off and go elsewhere.
http://cartoonmick.wordpress.com/about/
Cheers
Mick
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I dont have any experience in journalism, however i like stories that are short and to the point. but I do believe that some stories will naturally have to have some considerable amount of length Its up to the writer to make it interesting.
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This story highlights the massive difference between old school journalists and today’s article marketers.
Whilst old school journos had the constraints of space and time, article marketers don’t. Not when it comes to fitting x amount on a tangible page, at least.
And like it or not, popular blogs and websites are the tabloids of the future (or the now).
You may argue that they, journalists and bloggers, are different breeds. They’re not.
Journalists sold stories to newspapers for circulation, ad revenue, spin-off product and cash; bloggers and article marketers sell their content for back-links, site-views, ad revenue and every now and again a product or affiliate sale, or two.
Size is not important, to wit the title of this superb post alludes.
It’s understanding the target audience that’s the key to a good story, the point all of those past editors were trying to make (and sticking within time/story budget, of course), I can’t help but feel.
Gauge the story’s potential correctly and you have an insight to budget and scalability, hence what your audience will and won’t read, thus how much time you should devote to the piece and its subsequent length.
A point eloquently made here in this article, though somewhat indirectly. Hence the contradiction in the title. Job very well done.
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There’s no such thing as a too long or too short article.
There are boring articles and incomplete or rushed ones and then ones you can’t have enough of because they are smart and well written and you could go and and on. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder…the reader in this case.
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couldn’t agree more. I just graduated with a journalism degree and what they teach in class is how hard it is to know the difference between what is to much and what is to little. Especially after doing an internship at a daily newspaper and seeing editors “trim the fat” from what I thought was an already good piece. Great post
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Sometimes putting a point of view over to people can be so difficult
When the situation and story is so difficult to believe
But staying with the truth matters and like Dan says in one of your comments
Editing is good
Have a wonderful day
Daniel angel from Cape Cornwall
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My first job as a freelance journalist, still attending college, I eagerly asked my editor for every story I had the first two weeks “what’s the word count?” And every time he’d answer “whatever it needs to be.”
I got the hint.
Besides, in the age of 24/7 media, why write one long-form story when you can spin-off the thesis into 3 shorter ones?
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Reblogged this on The Splendid Siren and commented:
Short stories are good stories too!
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I don’t understand snobbery about data representation and graphics. As long as the information is there, a more accessible presentation is not a problem.
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It’s so hard to find anything worth reading nowadays. This is true for blogs, newspapers, books… Like you, I don’t care how long it is, as long as it matters. So few people take the time to observe their world and comment about it. That’s what I’m always looking for.
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The thought of today’s society is “why should I spend time reading the news when I can watch it on TV?” We have become mentally lazy, which is why I think we are suffering from all the degenerative mental diseases out there; we don’t exercise our brains like we do our bodies, and that is sad. Lengthy or short story does not really matter because most of us refuses to read.
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It’s amazing really how a small story can generate a lot of interest, for example The First Photographs of Prisoners In Bedford…has been picked up by several national and international papers and websites……….The pictures have been available for many years.
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Good post! One of my friends and I (both of us aspiring journalists) talk about this often and agree with what you say here. We’ve both been asked to write short, “informative” articles that are uninteresting and lack real human connection but fit the old-school journalism bill and it frustrates us. Thanks for the post!
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Great post! I’d say I’d rather jump straight to the details of any story and skip the preambles.
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[…] I discussed how long newspaper stories should be. […]
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[…] Steve Buttry: Newspaper stories are too long, except when they’re too short […]
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[…] Steve Buttry: Newspaper stories are too long, except when they’re too short […]
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[…] Alan Mutter criticized newspaper stories for being too long, I cited the Times’ Snow Fall as an example of effective use of multimedia to make a long story […]
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