On the potential effects of short-form content

Sarah Lacy wrote a paragraph that resonated:

“One of our most popular stories all week has been David Holmes’s report about how Tumblr wants to pay for journalism. And not just cat pictures, re-written press releases, or 300 word snark-fests by junior reporters paid $12 a post. This isn’t another content farm. They want real, actual New Yorker-style long form journalism.”

Then she says, that’s great. Who’s going to write it. She describes an upcoming talent cliff in a few years. Our society isn’t generating people capable of long form journalism or storytelling.

It’s a great article, and really worth reading.

There’s tremendous incentive, during this era, to communicate in extremely tiny units.

If a thought can’t be expressed in 140 characters, is it really expressible?

Twitter isn’t entirely to blame.

You may be familiar with image macros and the rage comic. These images, rapid jolts of easily consumable information, constitute a large volume of social media consumption. They’re popular.
Their appearance in a subreddit is the gas that kills the canary in the coalmine.

Communicate in an easy, tight way, and you’ll drown in karma, retweets, and likes.

• the 30 second spot, 

• the rapid fire debate soundbyte, and, 

• the billboard

We use the format because it’s effective. And, maybe it’s causing people to prefer it.

• the bullet point

The potential, long run effect of short-form content might be preference for the long-form.

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I’m Christopher Berry.
I’m building Authintic.