Most people don’t realize how much harder it is to write a short article than a large article August 17, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , trackbackThe Economist’s Andreas Kluth explains: “The folks at the New Yorker can blather on and on (”On an overcast Monday afternoon, I strode across Fifth Avenue to interview John Smith, ….”). We have to get to the point. There should be some nuance, some color, and we should cover the main bases, but all in … 500 words!
It’s friggin’ difficult. Then the readers show up in the mostly infantile comments section below the articles, invariably accusing us of utter ignorance, if not downright malice, because they know (or imagine) one little detail that was not in the 500 words.
Beyond that, of course, the brevity often hurts me, the writer. Invariably, I do research for every piece until I am satisfied that I know the subject well enough. I could easily then fill a few thousand words. So much therefore gets left on the cutting floor.
Which brings me to my second reason for linking to this week’s piece…”
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