Epic launches, Politico goes deeper: Why longform is the new necessity
HT: Abnormal ReturnsIn the last 24 hours, there have been two major updates to the list of media companies investing in longform journalism. Last night, the New York Times’ David Carr broke the news that writers Joshuah Bearman and Joshua Davis have launched a new site for longform reporting that might appeal to movie studios looking to turn articles into motion pictures. The site, called Epic, is backed by Medium, although the Times was vague on the exact nature of the relationship. (We’ve requested an interview with Epic’s founders to find out more, but that won’t be happening until next week).Meanwhile, earlier today, Politico announced that it is beefing up its recently relaunched magazine in an effort to expand its in-depth journalism efforts by hiring GQ and New York magazine contributor Jason Zengerle and Washington magazine’s Denise Kersten Wells. The organization also added one of its star reporters, Glenn Thrush, to the magazine team, which is headed by former Foreign Policy editors Susan Glasser and Blake Hounshell. Vanity Fair contribuing editor Todd Purdum also recently joined the Politico magazine.Non-profit investigative news organization ProPublica, which recently launched its own digital magazine, has also hired three new investigative reporters.The burst of activity comes as other digitally-oriented publications such as BuzzFeed, The Verge and Polygon (both owned by Vox Media), and Paul Carr’s NSFWCorp (Disclosure: Carr is a frequent contributor to PandoDaily and a friend of the company) are placing bets on in-depth reporting and analysis, and as new players such as The Big Roundtable and Beacon emerge.Even as some evidence suggests that people don’t read long articles online and mobile metrics indicate that people prefer to “snack” on news content on their mobile phones, editors and startups increasingly seem to believe that it is important to place more emphasis on longform reporting. As our own Sarah Lacy has pointed out before, Suddenly everyone wants New Yorker-style content (even as some fail attempting to get it).Why? Well, this isn’t a scientific analysis, but here are five things I suspect might be driving the “slow media” trend.TabletsOn Friday, we reported that people are spending considerably more time in mobile news apps than in other apps in general – 4.2 minutes per day compared to 3.2 minutes, according to Localytics. Less publicized but perhaps ultimately more important, however, Localytics found that the time people spend in news apps on tablets is 50 percent higher
people spend 50 times more time accessing news app content on tabletsthan they do on mobile phones (Update: Localytics have since corrected an error in its original reporting). Those numbers back up Pew’s 2012 findings that tablet owners read more news and longer articles, as well as a study by Bowker Market Research and Book Industry Study Group that shows tablets are becoming the preferred e-reading devices. Tablet ownership in the US is also growing fast – 44 percent of American households now have a tablet, up from 30 percent in 2012, according to Magid Media Futures. The more connected reading devices there are in the world, the more opportunities there are for publishers to find readers that previously would have been difficult to access.News is increasingly a commodityWhether it be tech news, political news, world news, or even local news, it is easier than ever before to get informed about daily events instantly and cheaply – in most cases, for free – thanks not only to the proliferation of news websites, apps, and new media companies, but also because of social media, and especially Twitter. The problem these days is not how to find what to read, but how to find signal in the noise – a process that actually involves finding reasons not to read certain things. Considered, in-depth reporting and storytelling that stresses longterm nourishment rather than quick-hit fix is one way to stand out from the frenzy of instant information being flung at readers from other quarters. Unless you’re the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times, the high-volume, high-velocity news is also proving difficult to monetize as the value of display ad units diminishes over time....MORE
