Ryan Chittum at The Columbia Journalism Review has documented the effect that Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of The Wall Street Journal’s Page 1 story length. Since 2007 the number of stories over 1,500 word in length has declined, the number of stories under 1,500 words in length has increased (substantially), and stories of 2,500 words or more have, essentially vanished:
This isn’t because total stories have been decreasing. Story counts in the paper have been steadily going up, even before Murdoch took over, as Audit Head Veterinarian Dean Starkman wrote last year in “Hamster Wheel“—and that’s not including things like blog posts, video hits, and early news stories for WSJ.com or “speedys†for Dow Jones Newswires.
Certainly, the Journal still does lots of top-flight work, and most stories don’t need 2,500 words. But many do, and how does going short as a policy help readers understand the really important stuff like systemic problems, corporate misbehavior, business innovation, or sweeping economic change?
Hat tip: Felix Salmon. Mr. Salmon lauds the change:
WSJ readers are busy: they don’t have time to wade through lots of overstuffed stories in the morning. They want to know what’s going on, and why, and they want their news-delivery mechanism to be as efficient as possible.
My view is that the length of a newspaper story is like the wattage of a light bulb: whatever it takes. Some stories can be reported adequately in 600 or even 400 words. Some take 2,500 words or longer. When you must put every story into a 600 word Procrustean bed, you’ll either report some stories inadequately or incoherently or you won’t report them at all.
That, I think, is the greatest problem in professional journalism today: stories that don’t fit the corporate mold aren’t being told at all.
The length doesn’t bother so much as what qualifies for news anymore. “Republican X says this, but Democrat Y says this!”. Fact checking is now relegated to a few Internet sites because I guess people want WWE style pseudo-drama instead of real reporting.
You touch on a point that I thought of working into this post but didn’t, Sam. News reporting has always passed through a partisan and ideological filter. That’s because it’s a human activity.
The Internet means that filter is much more apparent than it used to be.