Don’t read this in the office: 5 great pieces of long-form journalism

Posted: May 24th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: blogging, Content, Copy, Media, SEO | 4 Comments »

In the early days, the Internet was for reading and writing. Images took forever to load, and the nature of HTML meant accuracy was a necessity for putting anything online. As a result, the words on the web were often rather well written. Even the flame wars were in properly punctuated sentences.

Things changed: ecommerce brought people online to shop; YouTube gave the goggle-eyed TV-viewing masses to Google; finally, social networks made it easy for everyone to spew their most trivial thoughts into the cloud. Over time, search engine optimisation and the exigencies of linkbait culture have driven ‘style’ to the digital margins, a minor consideration against the all-important secret sauce of killer content and a great keyword-packed headline.

Here, then, are a few choice delicacies for anyone out there who still loves the baroque, the discursive and the prolix. Make yourself comfortable (and don’t click these links if your lunchbreak ends in 5 minutes):

  1. In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson
    Magnificently bullish 1999 description of the operating system wars
  2. Dangerous Minds, by Malcolm Gladwell
    From the New Yorker, the spiritual home of long-form journalism, a perfect twisty-turny Malcolm Gladwell analysis
  3. The Women’s Crusade, by Sheryl WuDunn
    Is there any major UK newspaper or website that would publish and promote a 7-page argument for the role women’s rights play in international development?
  4. The Great American Bubble Machine, by Matt Taibbi
    “[Goldman Sachs is] a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Wow. Just wow.
  5. Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds, by Michael Lewis
    The Liar’s Poker author has written an absolutely jaw-dropping dissection of the Greek financial crisis.

Know any great content that takes more than 10 minutes to read? Give me a few links in the comments below:

  • http://twitter.com/Polon Polon

    There’s some good stuff at http://longreads.com/.

  • http://bridbeast.wordpress.com/ bridbeast
  • http://www.googledigook.com buenosam

    Just ignored my own advice and looked at that in the office. Amazing. I’m not going to be reading anything else for weeks.

  • http://www.googledigook.com buenosam

    I like it.

    Curious how little from the UK is on there. I wonder if we actually don’t do long format, or if it’s just a bit of bias on the part of the website?