Comments on: The Long Form

By: Shaw

Shaw — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:53:08 +0000

I have a hard time staring at a computer screen for long periods of time.

Despite this, I still read plenty of longer stories online. Especially if they really grab my attention. The convenience of accessibility and price (usually free) outweighs my preference for the printed word.

By: Design for Long-Form Web Writing

Design for Long-Form Web Writing — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:26:58 +0000

[...] “You can’t do long-form writing online.” [...]

By: drew

drew — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:35:26 +0000

A great comment I enjoyed from this other post about the "long form" was:

you see so many other papers where the top story on the web site is “what’s the most salacious bit of cop news from this morning” or “what photo gallery is going to get the most hits” — obviously, the lowest common denominator in web “journalism.” What I’m hoping to do is try to get a narrative foothold in our paper’s digital world. And when you go up to a web editor to discuss this, and the first thing he says is, “Well, we first need to realize that people don’t read long stories online,” you can see the culture we’re battling here."

By: Karina

Karina — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:23:20 +0000

For what it’s worth, I tend to do exactly what the article suggested: I look until I find what I need, and then I sit and will read the whole thing. I may bounce around quite a bit until I find it, but that’s indicative of navigation and a usually unclear process of how to go about finding it.

As a designer in training, as it were, I’m very interested to see what others say about this matter. I believe long text is just fine — but I’m curious about the how. How to make it easy to read, accessible, and (interesting content supposedly a given) worth sitting down to focus on.