Content farms and the decline of long form
by H.G. Watson Want to get hits on your website? Easy. Just feature a list. “Here are the Best Dumb Things Ryan Lochte Said on His Reality Show,” or “10 Reasons Duke the Corgi Has the Potential To Be One of America’s Next Top Corgis” are actual articles you can find on the sites […]
Byliner adds fiction to its offerings—and signs Margaret Atwood
When Byliner launched last spring, it was clear that it would do great things for narrative non-fiction, alongside other new sites like The Atavist. In the intervening 10 months, the site has grown considerably and its “Byliner Originals” have consistently topped Amazon’s Kindle Singles bestseller list. Early this year it began selling short works of […]
Magazines get in the digital long-form game
In a story for the New York Observer, Emily Witt shares journalist David Dobbs’ digital long-form success story. Working with The Atavist, his long-form piece about his mother’s affair with a flight surgeon during the Second World War sold a “healthy five-figure” number of copies through Kindle Singles. As Dobbs received a dollar for every […]
Gothamist‘s venture into long-form
Joining other digital-only publications and projects, such as Byliner and The Atavist, that are hoping for a rebirth of long-form journalism online, Gothamist, a NYC news site, has announced it will pay a freelancer $5,000 to write a 5,000- to 15,000-word feature. A post on FishbowlNY pointed us to Gothamist‘s call for journalists who can […]
Longing for long form
As it gets tougher and tougher for journalists to successfully pitch long-form pieces to traditional publications — without mostly writing them first — other options are opening up.
