[lbo-talk] the 50-word story

[Tom Walker]

>From DAN SHANOFF: Subject -- Response to Frank Ahren's WaPo column 
about Internet writing. As someone who writes a "mainstream" column 
based around short, chatty, opinion-based news delivery for an online 
audience, I would say that teaching "short-form journalism" -- as 
you'd find on a blog, cell-phone screen, iPod or other portable 
device -- is as vital to the future of the industry as training young 
journalists how to research and write long, investigative pieces.

Anyone can write a 1,000-word story, but I'm not sure where the 
relevancy of that is headed in a world where consumers won't give you 
100 words, let alone 10 times that much. Learning how to digest a 
complex story into 50-75 words combining news, analysis and voice 
doesn't diminish the news; it is simply critical to meeting the 
readers in the way they are going to consume the news.

145 words -- 95 too many. Try writing sandwichboard stories. Fifty is forty too many.

The Sandwichman