The internet has millions of voices, with unlimited space to make their points. You know what’s missing?
Brevity.
America desperately needs a New York Times for Dummies — same content, 90% less verbiage. So many stories from so many publications these days end up in people’s tl;dr baskets (too long; didn’t read).
I subscribe to five newspapers online and read tons of other stuff, but I’ve never seen concise explanations for why we should pay reparations to descendants of slaves, how we can stop climate change, what it means to be nonbinary.
A workplace columnist had a sadistic editor (me) who limited him to 100 words, so even readers with only half a minute could learn something. The most visceral editorial I ever read was 123 words, about why one man should get the death penalty. The last two words were “fry him.”
Americans need strong words on slave reparations and climate change and being nonbinary, but the essays they see today are way tl.
People can tell a dozen lies in 100 words. Give me one truth — something powerful I can share with others.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is experimenting with ignoring politicians’ “false statements and stunts.” How many thousands of lives could have been saved if the media was vigilant about that with COVID?
Publications tweet idiotic quotes, then refute them from behind their paywalls. Or they put craziness in their headline and the voice of reason in paragraph 10 (the tl;dr zone).
My NYT4D would have a motto: All the News That’s Fit to Print — But Not the Crap That Isn’t.
This is now longer than the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln said 272 words. The lead essay in the Times’ 1619 Project blew by that in two paragraphs.
The essay was beautifully written and won a Pulitzer, but was tl;dr for me. Journalists and scholars loved that project, but I bet it was ignored by whites who didn’t finish college, the people who sway elections.
My NYT4D version would have told them in 100 words (OK, maybe 200) why 1619 was so important, how lessons from our past influence our passions of today, why they should be better informed. People can connect the dots, but they have to see them first.
Don’t make it so hard.
Editors love Big Stories. They impress Very Important People. Friends and journalists applaud them. They get likes, retweets and awards. So reporters get into this Pavlovian loop of writing for those people, not average folks. Fans will drool over just about anything, but others need to be enticed. Vague tweets and long-winded ledes won’t do it.
To bastardize a quote from that musical about a verbose politician, the world is wide enough for both Big Stories and brevity. Journalists are building this wonderfully diverse, majestic superhighway of eloquence, but their on-ramps suck.
No one will win a Pulitzer for writing 272 words about how to reduce police shootings. But maybe someone will notice, and save a life.
Murphy Slaw
Something old: That would be you (and me) if you read this New York Times story about the women’s gold medalist in the Olympic street skateboarding competition. She’s 13. The silver medalist is younger.
Something new: This is me if I haven’t had my coffee.
Something borrowed: It’s amazing how many CEOs and politicians put their fingers in their ears and are oblivious about something that’s damaging the lives of thousands — until it happens to them.
Something blue: The woman who tweeted this lost someone close to her in a hit and run. Maybe the responses will help if you know someone who’s having a tough time.