NOT JUST ABOUT LENGTH

Would you feel drawn to a movie or a book simply because it is long? (“Oooh—you should really read Moby-Dick—it’s super long.”)

LONG-FORM: JOURNALISM

“New Journalism” is a stirring promise to the wider world; “long-form” is

A NEW NEW JOURNALISM?

If long-form doesn’t fit, what term is elastic enough to encompass the varied journalism it has come to represent, from narrative to essay, profile to criticism.

It is reflective

It gives context

It takes time

ONE DEFINITION

a piece of “long-form,” as we now call multi-thousand-word, narrative-driven reported articles…. Can be both boring and not worthy of the attention it has received…

OR ANOTHER DEFINITION

Digitally ambitious journalism, “Snow Fall,” a narrative of skiers buried in an avalanche that was told through the layering of words, video, and graphics in the New York Times.

THE BAD

When a long magazine story goes from being one part of a steady diet of journalistic consumption to something artisanal, a treat for connoisseurs. (NYT)

EGO DRIVEN NOT STORY DRIVEN

AND THE GOOD

Whether a long-form story is published in a magazine or on the web, its goal should be to understand and illuminate its subject, and maybe even use that subject to (subtly) explore some larger, more universal truths. Above all, that requires empathy, the real hallmark of great immersive journalism.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF LONG-FORM

Personal essay

Narrative story-telling

Multi-media reportage

Investigative

Data- exploration

But they are all ‘immersive journalism’ of some type

COLUMBIA J’SCHOOL FORUM ON LONG-FORM

One point of agreement throughout the day was that long-form, though experiencing a new jump in popularity, is not at all a new form of writing. “I think longf-orm is just a new name for feature magazine stories,” said Columbia j-school professor Michael Shapiro, who recently founded the long-form website The Big Roundtable. “For me, it’s not an essay, it’s a reported piece of journalism,” he said.

WHAT MATTERS

What matters is knowing what matters,” SrinijaSrinivasan, at Yahoo and its former editor in chief. “The glut, the variety of stuff coming at us is accelerating more rapidly than ever before. It’s a very simple matter: Be useful. In order to be useful, you often need way more than the soundbyte [where] you can only be salacious, you can only be misleading, you can only be kind of cheap-shot.” To stand out among the online media outlets clamoring for attention,

BENEFIT TO STUDENTS

Real journalism involves leaving the house

Real journalism involves working long hours

Real journalism involves talking to lots of different people establishing a narrative, a timeline, a voice

MY OLD NEWSROOM

AND NOW

THE BENEFITS OF LONG-FORM:

It introduces a student to a more nuanced form of reporting, the kind that often takes years of experience to gain…

IT MAKES LEARNING REAL

BEST PRACTISE EXAMPLE

Maj and multi-media assignment19 studentsBroken up into multi-media project teamsGiven 8 to 9 weeks The end result: Not just good storiesBut a true learning curve

THE WEBSITE STORY

..Reports in media suggested that lots of female students from universities around Ireland were signing up to meet older wealthy men on a particular website

OUR STUDENTS WENT UNDER-COVER

THE STORY

They posed as potential ‘dates’They met with potential ‘older men’They contacted other women on the

siteThey spoke to the policeThey spoke to a psychologist

WHAT THEY DISCOVERED

The site had dangersSome of those contacting the site

were young female students with debts who were not aware of what they were getting in to…

SAFETY AND SELF-RELIANCE

“Firstly, above all we had to protect the reporters safety…. “

ETHICAL QUESTIONS

“reasons why the story was very much in the public interest: It addressed issues of the safety of women, a potentially illegal activity and the recruitment of college students into something which resembled prostitution”

SOURCE DIFFICULTIES

“finding sources who firstly were happy to discuss their experiences with journalists, this reflected a problem finding sources in general, as we encountered a contrasting challenge gaining legitimate organisational voices for the project. “

WHAT THE STUDENT LEARNT

“The project for me was an extremely useful opportunity to gain experience into what is involved in undercover investigations, and the skills which they involve, along with the need to defend why its methods are necessary to bring the particular story to the public. It was also an incredibly useful and unique experience to give so much time to a story and to see what can be added to a story if significant time is given to delve deep into the issue at hand.”

WHY LONG-FORM

Journalism is changingThose we train must be distinctive in their

abilitiesThey should be able to dig deeperThey should be able to layer a story

THE BEST OF JOURNALISM

In the end, it doesn’t matter if one is writing about a huckster or a fraud. The best work still enables readers to experience their subjects as human beings, not as mere objects of curiosity.( NYT)