Mark Armstrong

Longreads: Students, Professors: We Want Your Best #College #Longreads

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:19:39 -0400

Longreads: Students, Professors: We Want Your Best #College #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…

Longreads: Celebrating Four Years of Longreads

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:12:23 -0400

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 Should Know About Isaac Fitzgerald

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:24:03 -0400

Roxane Gay is Spelled With One "N": Things You Should Know About Isaac Fitzgerald:

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 'To Err, Divine, so Improvise' and 'Afterlife'

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:19:01 -0400

Longreads: Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Keeler on 'To Err, Divine, so Improvise' and 'Afterlife':

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…

quartey: It’s the little things. Read-later app Pocket recently...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:08:36 -0400

quartey:

It’s the little things.

Read-later app Pocket recently announced a suite of tools for publishers, including the ability to ”add a custom text footer message that will appear at the bottom of any article saved from your site.”

I saw it in action for the first time on this great article on The Awl that celebrates the invaluable work that editors do, and bids a heartfelt farewall to departing Awl editor Carrie Frye.

This is the message at the end of the article:

Thanks for reading The Awl! We appreciate you. Hey, do you like reading on your iPhone? You could test out our app for free and see if you like it.

I know that this message is being displayed to everyone who is reading The Awl inside Pocket…and yet I can’t help but be completely charmed.

The Awl isn’t one of my most visited sites (I think the only other Awl story I’ve read is Jeb Boniakowski’s magisterial We Must Build An Enormous McWorld In Times Square, A Xanadu Representing A McDonald’s From Every Nation. Read this now. Seriously. Right now.) but in four short sentences The Awl:

quickly communicated something about their culture. I now associate them with warmth and friendliness.

got me to check out their iPhone app.

got me to check out other articles on their website.

Thumbs-up to Pocket for empowering these intimate moments between publishers and readers, and high-five to The Awl for the great execution.

Longreads Is Joining Forces with The Atlantic

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:08:00 -0400

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 the past four years, and we’re looking forward to more.

longreads: “The Ghost in the Machine.” Alex Pappademas,...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:55:13 -0400

longreads:

“The Ghost in the Machine.” Alex Pappademas, Playboy.

CHRIS-TOF-CHUCK: Adding a "Saved Items" functionality to your site/blog with one line of code

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:48:21 -0400

CHRIS-TOF-CHUCK: Adding a "Saved Items" functionality to your site/blog with one line of code:

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.

longreads: “The Weeklies.” —Monica Potts, American...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 20:12:46 -0400

longreads:

“The Weeklies.” —Monica Potts, American Prospect

From our Top 5 Longreads of the Week.

Why Longevity Matters

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:45:51 -0400

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 Pocket. Three days after the story was published, “opens” overtook “saves,” and this story has gone on to have an open rate of 50% and an active lifespan of 19 days.

When readers were given the time to come back to it, they did.

I’m excited to be working on Pocket for Publishers (to my publisher friends, go sign up! It’s free), because I think it’s finally answering some important questions about save-for-later. And it’s providing clarity to the sites that are investing in high-quality storytelling that retains its value for weeks, months, and years.

Longreads Member Pick: Jason Zengerle's First Assignment for Might Magazine

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:45:00 -0400

Longreads Member Pick: Jason Zengerle's First Assignment for Might Magazine:

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, by Janet Reitman

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:45:28 -0500

Longreads: Longreads Member Pick: Baghdad Follies, by Janet Reitman:

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…

How Have You Devalued Professional Writing Today?

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:02:00 -0500

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 professional writers who might write about it for a publisher that is paying them?

2. If you wrote a print magazine story for a publisher, then asked that publisher to “unlock it on the web for free,” are you undercutting or devaluing the work of those who write exclusively for the web?

3. If you only share free content on Twitter and Facebook, versus paywalled content or ebooks, are you undercutting or devaluing the work of publishers who paywall their content?

4. If you publish free content on the web, are you killing the ancillary revenue that a writer could bring in from future reprint rights for those stories, or the ability to repurpose those stories into a book?

5. If you pay freelancers, are you killing the opportunity to provide healthcare and stability to a full-time writer instead?

I’m not trying to be flip, but I think we, the Internet, are all somewhat responsible for the sorry state of freelance writing. I hope we can take steps to improve it.

For what it’s worth, Longreads is trying to do its small part: We currently set aside ~30% of our Member dues to pay writers and publishers for reprint rights to our weekly Member Picks.

And last night, Pocket’s founder Nate Weiner spoke at the SF Hacks/Hackers journalism panel and asserted our commitment to publishers and how we can help solve the bigger problem of supporting high-quality content on the web. I’m excited for what’s to come on this front.

The Death of Everyblock and Why I Suddenly Care About Local*

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:05:53 -0500

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 Patch) have abandoned.

***

I’ve lived in some amazing neighborhoods over the past five years, but I can’t say I ever knew them like a local should. We’ve had kids and moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and now to Oakland.

Now, after seven months on the West Coast, it occurs to me that I know my neighborhood more deeply than I ever did in New York.

It’s not because New York is crowded and anonymous. It’s because preschool has started.

There is suddenly a geographic social scene in which we are automatically included. And it made me realize that when we talk about local, many of us are really talking about kids.

Our social media lives are global, but in our pre-kid lives, the geographic social scene revolved around bars and restaurants and concerts and sporting events. But we were never tied to our neighborhoods. We could go out in Cobble Hill, but we could just as easily go out in the West Village. Our friends were dispersed everywhere around the city. It was relatively easy for everyone to travel to each other.

School changes the boundaries dramatically. Where you decide to live can be decided by the reputation of the school district. And suddenly, you must care about what’s in your immediate vicinity.

For many, the best scenario is to live within blocks of the schools that your children will attend. Being close to school makes everything easier—for friendships, playdates, sporting events, fundraisers, carpooling, and when they’re old enough, walking to school. My parents were newcomers to Fresno when I was born, and they told me what every parent tells me: We met all of our friends through our kids’ schools.

***

In the 1980s, my dad also met people through a local club called the Junior Chamber of Commerce, or Jaycees. For him, there were business reasons for getting to know people in his community. He was an insurance agent, so his network of potential clients came from local businesses and the relationships he developed in his neighborhood.

Think of your friends. Are many of them still working for a truly “local” or locally dependent business? Or do they commute by car or train from their suburb to a larger city? Or do they simply work on the Internet?

The truly local business is an endangered species, which means there are fewer advertisers for small local newspapers, and fewer people who are interested in their cities for “business” reasons. I’m not necessarily worried about how things are changing so rapidly, but it could help explain why none of my friends are members of the Jaycees, or Rotary Club, or Kiwanis. Local clubs are aging, and there are fewer young people coming in to replace them. Their social lives are elsewhere. They are connecting globally for global work.

***

This is all to say: I think the app or company that “solves” local will probably be a parenting app. Not necessarily a “local” app.

I’m certainly not suggesting that only parents care about their communities—that’s not the case at all, and every city will have a diverse makeup of people who make their community special.

But what I am suggesting is that parenting is something can force a passive resident (like myself) to suddenly pay closer attention to what’s going on around me. It’s what made me realize there is a lot of local information missing from my media diet. And I want a remedy.

When we moved to Oakland, we asked people: How do we find out what’s going on? They suggested blogs like Susan Mernit’s Oakland Local, but they also recommended a number of different Yahoo Groups and Google Groups, mostly for parents. These private forums (and parents want them private) are still the backbone of local conversation across the United States, and no one has introduced a better approach yet.

I’m seeing more possibilities everywhere I look: Jeff Atwood’s Discourse.org, announced this week, seems perfect for local. So could something like GroupMe or Couple or Avocado.

It’s nice to see that Patch is still here, but it’s also slightly depressing to think they’re the only ones trying. If you’re working on something local, I’d love to hear about it.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if, one day, we all discover a great new parenting app that sneaks up on us and then reveals that it’s really for everyone in the neighborhood.

*That’s not true, exactly. I did care enough about “local” in 2002 that I started a blog about Fresno (RIP Fresyes). But I was living in New York at the time and it was mostly about Kevin Federline. So it doesn’t quite count.

ANDREW GOLIS: #podcastme

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:20:35 -0500

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…

What's a Better Metric for the 'Health' of Longform?

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:27:43 -0500

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 ask a new question: Is there a better way to gauge how longform stories and the people who publish them are faring in 2013? I’d personally love to track the following:

1. Total # of publishers who produce more than 6 longform stories per year—and pay writers for them.

2. Total # of longform writers who have healthcare.

3. Total # of freelance longform writers whose number of assignments and revenue from those pieces is growing year over year.

4. Diversity of bylines

5. Total # of publishers who hire and train new reporters with a focus on narrative / investigative journalism.

Here Is What Happens When You Leave Lindsay Lohan Out of Your 'Longform Meltdown' Story

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:52:36 -0500

Here Is What Happens When You Leave Lindsay Lohan Out of Your 'Longform Meltdown' Story:

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 dedicated to great storytelling.

2. It appears the number of long-form stories are actually on the upswing at the NYT and Washington Post since 2011—just as tablet and smartphone adoption was growing. That leaves the Los Angeles Times (which still does great work) and the Wall Street Journal. The latter has been quite clear about its desire to go shorter.

3. As a commenter noted on Romenesko, is there a correlation with the drop in overall space in the print edition of these newspapers?

4. Even if newspapers are cutting their long-form content, it’s a missed opportunity, because they’d be the only ones doing so. Online publishers like Deadspin, The Awl and The Verge and niche magazine publishers are only deepening their commitment to this storytelling.

Longreads Member Exclusive: The American Nonconformist, by Thomas Frank

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:38:13 -0500

Longreads Member Exclusive: The American Nonconformist, by Thomas Frank:

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…

The Year in Pocket: 240 Million Saves in 2012, and Vanity...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 08:54:00 -0500

The Year in Pocket: 240 Million Saves in 2012, and Vanity Fair’s “Obama’s Way” Most-Saved Article

Longreads Best of 2012: Emily M. Keeler

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:51:16 -0500

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.

Also, I really love Longreads, it’s such a wonderful thing on the Internet.

Thanks Emily!