Last week my friend Ted kindly sent me issue 2 of The Believer, McSweeney's monthly magazine: “There are book reviews which are not necessarily timely, and which are very often very long. There are interviews which are also very long.”
It's a lovely thing — deep colours, calm layout, thick paper, no ads. And I'm enjoying those long articles too so far (they also have their own Lazyweb). And they now appear to have started shipping to places outside the US and Canada. Considering how much crappy conventional magazines cost, with their thin paper, tiddly space-filler columns, throw-away articles and swamp of ads, it's good value. Tempted.
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Richard Hyett11 Jun 2003Permalink
“book reviews which are very often very long”…”There are interviews which are also very long.”
The hallmark of a professional journalist is a person who can deliver a set number of words or a speech of set length of time. They can make the piece comprehensible and include a beginning, a middle and an end. Such professional qualities have recently been ascribed to that national treasure Tony Benn, by both John Sergeant and Matthew Parris. Tony started his career as a producer for the BBC.
I still shudder at a recent lecture I attended on “Web Services using Apache's Axis”. Thirty minutes in, I had half a dozen questions, sixty minutes on I had two questions, after ninety minutes I just wanted to leave. There is a lot to be said for being terse.
Ocassionaly an overlong piece can work, “War and Peace”, “Moby Dick” even Bruce Springsteen. Generaly an article that takes longer than ten minutes to read has to be exceptional. Long articles I pass
I am Attention Deficit Syndrome free