May 2013
2 posts
3 tags
65% of Stories Shared on #Longreads Started on... →
Recently, media people have returned to talking about our love or hate of the following phrases: “Is ‘Snow Fall’ the future of journalism …
Here’s my first Medium post, linked from my Tumblr. I don’t know WHAT IT ALL MEANS yet, but it’s a nice authoring tool, for sure.
Longreads: Students, Professors: We Want Your Best... →
longreads:
Throughout May and June, a new generation of reporters, writers, editors, and essayists make their way out of school and into the professional world. They come bearing clips, work samples produced for class or during an internship. Hundreds of media outlets at colleges and universities across…
April 2013
8 posts
Longreads: Celebrating Four Years of Longreads →
longreads:
Longreads just celebrated its fourth birthday, and it’s been a thrill to watch this community grow since we introduced this service and Twitter hashtag in 2009. Thank you to everyone who participates, whether it’s as a reader, a publisher, a writer—or all three.
Roxane Gay is Spelled With One "N": Things You... →
roxanegay:
Yesterday, Isaac Fitzgerald announced that on May 1 he is leaving The Rumpus after four years as managing editor, and will be assuming the position of publicity director for McSweeney’s.
This is wonderful news and I couldn’t be happier for him. He deserves all the best things. He will also be…
Longreads: Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Keeler on... →
longreads:
Today’s guest pick comes from Emily M. Keeler, a writer, critic, and the editor of Little Brother Magazine. She recommends two stories, “To Err, Divine, so Improvise” by Kaitlin Fontana in Hazlitt and “Afterlife” by Chris Wallace in The Paris Review:
“This past week was one of…
2 tags
Longreads Is Joining Forces with The Atlantic →
longreads:
We have some big news to share today: Longreads is teaming up with The Atlantic, in a partnership that will allow us to expand our site and membership model—and continue to serve this community of readers, writers and publishers.
When I first started the #longreads hashtag four years…
Very excited about this. Thanks to everyone who has participated in this community over...
CHRIS-TOF-CHUCK: Adding a "Saved Items"... →
akristofcak:
TL;DR:
Using one line of code (edit: two, if you need to add jQuery), you can add a “Saved Items” button to your site or blog to enable your readers to easily access articles that they have saved from your site to their Pocket account without leaving your site.
Also, using a bookmarklet,…
This looks fantastic.
March 2013
4 posts
3 tags
Why Longevity Matters
This graph, from the brand new Pocket for Publishers, is a great example. It’s the Pocket activity for “Bitter Pill,” Time magazine’s (incredible, go subscribe and read it) 25,000-word story on the secret costs of healthcare in America, written by Steven Brill. In green, you can see the daily “saves” to Pocket. In red, the daily “opens” in...
Longreads Member Pick: Jason Zengerle's First... →
longreads:
This week, we’re thrilled to feature Jason Zengerle, a contributing editor for New York magazine and GQ who has been featured on Longreads many times. Our Member Pick is Jason’s 1997 story on Michael Moore for Might magazine: “Is This Man the Last, Best Hope for Popular Liberalism…
Longreads: Longreads Member Pick: Baghdad Follies,... →
longreads:
This week, we’re excited to feature Janet Reitman, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. “Baghdad Follies” is Reitman’s 2004 story on what it was like to be a war correspondent in Iraq. As…
3 tags
How Have You Devalued Professional Writing Today?
This week’s discussion about paying writers has led some to argue that publishers, by asking for free or cheap work, and writers, by accepting little to no wages, are devaluing the work of professional writers. What else is devaluing the work of professional writing on the web? 1. By having this debate, for free, on Twitter.com, Branch.com and Tumblr.com, are we devaluing the work of...
February 2013
1 post
The Death of Everyblock and Why I Suddenly Care...
I was saddened today to learn that NBC News is shutting down Everyblock, the Knight-funded local project created by Adrian Holovaty, Wilson Miner, Dan O’Neil and Paul Smith. It was an exciting attempt to help organize information and data for cities and neighborhoods—and it was inspiring to watch them attempt something both local and scalable, in a way that many people (aside from maybe...
January 2013
4 posts
ANDREW GOLIS: #podcastme →
golis:
In an attempt to catch up with the world of podcasting, I asked friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook what I should be listening to. The result was 50 different shows recommended by 35 people. Ten of the shows were recommended by more than one person. As unscientific as a Friday night…
3 tags
What's a Better Metric for the 'Health' of...
Dean Starkman, Mathew Ingram and Gangrey are all continuing the conversation about whether there is a “Longform Meltdown” at the major newspapers.
Since I don’t think the data shows anything as dramatic as what Starkman and CJR’s headline suggests—and putting aside the question of whether “longform” means narrative or investigative or both—I thought I’d...
3 tags
Here Is What Happens When You Leave Lindsay Lohan... →
Dean Starkman’s piece feels oddly timed, especially when you think about the number of outstanding stories being shared in the Longreads community every day and the popularity of long-form content in Pocket. 1. Starkman is examining just four newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times), leaving out papers like the Tampa Bay Times, who are...
Longreads Member Exclusive: The American... →
longreads:
This week’s Longreads Member pick is “The American Nonconformist in the Age of the Commercialization of Dissent,” a 1992 essay by Thomas Frank from The Baffler, the magazine he cofounded with Keith White in 1988. Frank writes: “In republishing this bit of juvenilia from 1992—my…
December 2012
4 posts
5 tags
Longreads Best of 2012: Emily M. Keeler →
emk-irl:
longreads:
Emily M. Keeler is a writer and the founding editor of Little Brother Magazine.
Best Pair of Essays on Loneliness Emily Cooke, “The Lonely Ones” – The New Inquiry Susan Sontag is a force that continues to be reckoned with, and the publication of her second volume of journals…
Longereads invited me to pick a few great things I read this year, and here they are.
...
3 tags
Pocket Rolls Out New Site Subscription Partners:... →
Re: This, very excited about what this means for publishers.
November 2012
2 posts
Customer Service. →
akristofcak:
This post is a bit of a whine, and a self-pitying one, so if you’re generally not into that or not in the mood for it right now, consider yourself forewarned.
Today I received an email at iluv@reading.ly, the general inbox for Readingly, the app I created from scratch and spend 99.9% of my…
Longreads Member Exclusive: Cormac McCarthy's... →
longreads:
This week we’re excited to feature a Longreads Exclusive from David Kushner, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone whose work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and Wired. “Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse” is Kushner’s 2007 Rolling Stone profile of the Pulitzer…
October 2012
11 posts
1 tag
Longreads Member Exclusive: The Miracle Man →
longreads:
Our latest Exclusive comes from Andrew Rice, a contributing editor to New York magazine whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and we’re excited to feature “The…
Super story from Andrew Rice about what happens when you’re a pastor accused of...
Tipping for Content →
5 tags
Serials: So Hot Right Now
Still lost in the ongoing discussion about long-form storytelling being “back” is one (of many!) important questions we should ask: What should long-form storytelling look like when it is native to the web? For Longreads, the vast majority of stories shared within our community were first created for (and funded by) print publications—then, later, they’re posted online. So these...
Longreads: The Longreads Membership: What You're... →
longreads:
By now you’ve probably seen our Longreads Member Exclusives—a mix of outstanding magazine stories and book excerpts you can’t find anywhere else on the web, from writers like the New York Times’s Charles Duhigg, Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Vanity Fair’s Elissa Schappell, and publishers like
4 tags
Longreads Member Exclusive: How the Light Gets In
longreads:
Our latest Exclusive comes from author Elissa Schappell, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and co-founder and editor at large of Tin House, which is where she published “How the Light Gets In”—a story about a life changed by seizures. See it here.
p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member.
A beautiful story, and thanks Elissa and Tin...
1 tag
Congratulations! Your Journalism Kickstarter Was...
Here’s my first tip: Don’t build an app. I’m not saying *never* build an app. Just not right now. It’s not (most likely) what you are good at. It’s not (most likely) why your friends and followers supported your journalism project. Focus on the things you are good at, like creating great stories. It’s probably pretty obvious, but this is just one quick...
September 2012
4 posts
5 tags
A Longreads Member Exclusive: When Your Therapist...
longreads:
Our second Longreads members exclusive! Our latest pick comes from Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone whose work has been featured on Longreads quite a bit. She wrote this piece, “When Your Therapist Drives You Crazy,” in 2002 for Philadelphia magazine.
You can read an excerpt of our second exclusive here.
Crushing Debt Drove Me to Kosovo — And Then to... →
June 2012
1 post
Curation and the Questions No One Is Asking
It’s been three months since our last Internet debate about “curation,” so by all means, let’s have another one!
The latest argument began last week after a mysterious tweet seemed to finally produce hard evidence that curators do, in fact, think they are better than everyone else. I’ve never met a “curator” who believes this, and it’s the same...
April 2012
1 post
2 tags
Nate Weiner: Why Read It Later/Pocket Went Free →
From Read It Later / Pocket’s founder:
nateweiner:
Today we launched a brand new version of Read It Later (now named Pocket). As a part of this update we have made all of our apps free. This is a big change to how we’ve operated in the past and I wanted to give some more insight into the decision. Personally, I always like to know how the…
March 2012
1 post
6 tags
The Hot Dog Shooter & the Takeout Bag: A Portable...
Read It Later users keep content on their tablets and phones for an average of 96 hours after they’ve saved it. What does that say about the lifespan of content and how we value it?
The other night I had this nightmare that I was trapped in a hot-dog eating contest.
It was an extreme hot-dog eating competition, hosted inside a dystopian terrordome. Thugs in lycra shorts pointed hot dog cannons...
January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Shifting reading habits boost Read It Later in... →
nateweiner:
Had the pleasure of meeting Om a few weeks ago. Great conversation. Great guy. Honored to have him write about us.
Nice piece from GigaOm. Also: Read It Later founder Nate Weiner is now on Tumblr. Go follow him!
December 2011
4 posts
Longreads: Writer Logan Sachon: My Top Longreads... →
longreads:
Logan Sachon writes for The Awl and other places also. She lives in Virginia.
***
• “Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library,” by Maria Bustillos (The Awl)
This piece just blew me away, and I’m not even a DFW devotee (I’ve yet to tackle any of his…
I have Logan to thank for introducing me to Dear Sugar this year, among (many) others.
Longreads: Rolling Stone's Doree Shafrir: My Top... →
longreads:
Doree Shafrir is an editor at Rolling Stone, where she hangs out with the Misfits on a regular basis. She can also be found at doree.tumblr.com.
***
When I went back into my Kindle and my Twitter and Tumblr and email and all the other places where I noted or saved especially…
4 tags
GQ's Sean Fennessey: My Top Longreads of 2011 →
longreads:
Sean Fennessey is the editor of GQ.com. (See more stories on his Longreads page.)
I’ll try to follow a few guidelines for the sake of imagined objectivity, so, no friends; no GQ pieces; no pieces published before January 1, 2011; no stories pseudonymously submitted by my mom; no…
Sean sets the bar.
June 2011
1 post
Our first Longreads Member perk: A digital...
longreads:
Last month we introduced the (completely optional) Longreads Membership, and we’ve been thrilled with the response so far. I wanted to personally thank everyone for their support and encouragement.
We’re also excited to announce the first official perk for our Longreads Members: a free, three-month digital subscription to the New York Review of Books.
The NYRB team—who have...
