Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Greg Marx has written a follow-up to Michael Kinsley’s attack on the length and style of newspaper style writing. Marx questions whether shorter really is better and takes another look at ‘expert’ quotes.
The fact that a lot of people still read newspapers, and only newspapers, suggests that they may like – or at least, feel accustomed to – the way newspaper stories are written.
This one’s zipping about pretty fast and doing the Twitter rounds (@arusbridger and @jeffjarvis just a few of the people to pick it up.)
“Few industries in this country have been as coddled as newspapers,” begins Michael Kinsley’s realistic look at life after newspapers. Here’s one extract:
“True enough, the industry missed a whole armada of boats. If newspapers had been smarter, or moved faster, they might have kept the classified ads. They might have invented social networking. But that’s all hindsight. I didn’t think of these things, nor did you. Judging from Tribune Co., for which I once worked, the typical newspaper executive is a bear of little brain. Until recently, little brain was needed. Even now, to say the newspaper industry has no problems that a busload of geniuses couldn’t solve is essentially saying that the industry’s problems are insoluable. Or at least insoluable without help.”