Mediagazer: When ‘Long-Form’ Is Bad Form (Jonathan Mahler/New York Times)

5:50 PM ET, January 26, 2014

Top News:

Jonathan Mahler / New York Times:

When ‘Long-Form’ Is Bad Form — LAST week, the sports and pop culture website Grantland published a story called “Dr. V's Magical Putter” — a piece of “long-form,” as we now call multi-thousand-word, narrative-driven reported articles — about a woman named Essay Anne Vanderbilt …

Discussion: Marco.org, @saramorrison, @leshinton, @jonathanmahler, @sternbergh, @glennf, @jasonschreier, @adamklaff, @buzzfeedben, Nieman Storyboard, Prof Chris Daly's Blog and Mediashift

Ben Smith / Medium:

What The Longform Backlash Is All About — Taking the best of the magazine craft online. And leaving the rest on paper. — BuzzFeed executive editor Doree Shafrir and I started talking about hiring a “longform” editor in the spring of 2012, at the urging of our most experienced writer, Michael Hastings.

Discussion: @yahel, @peretti, @ryanlawler, @ezraklein, @carr2n, @jayrosen_nyu, @markhor, @jessepesta, @tcarmody, @patrickcdoyle, @michaelluo, @brianstelter, @mattapuzzo, @adambvary and Nieman Storyboard

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Prominent NYT news stories “go too far in the direction of interpretation, analysis and elaborate writing” — 'Just the Facts, Ma'am' No More — IT'S a Monday morning in mid-January. Your print edition of The Times is at hand, along with your coffee. You scan it for news.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @rsingel, @byronyork, @brithume, @fmanjoo and @fmanjoo

Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:

For some, Twitter is becoming less about relevancy and more about one-liners — Valley of the Blahs: How Justin Bieber's Troubles Exposed Twitter's Achilles' Heel — At some point, Twitter and the rest of social media became less about wanting to share the news and more about wanting to be the news.

Discussion: Gigaom, BAGnewsNotes, TechCrunch, @gaberivera, @cschweitz, The Next Web, @caseynewton, @jsnell, @mikeisaac, @mikeisaac, @raju, @laurengoode and SocialTimes

Megan Finnerty / Arizona Republic:

Friend of Dr. V blames Grantland story for timing of suicide, but not for the suicide itself — Friend blames timing of Gilbert inventor's suicide on fear of impending article — It was just after noon Oct. 18 when Gerri Jordan walked into the bedroom of her Gilbert home and found …

Discussion: @danreilly11 and @dangillmor

Fernando Alfonso III / Daily Dot:

Hoaxsters bought us 75,000 fake followers in a new kind of Twitter attack — by the Syrian Electronic Army and a few — users, most of the threats the Daily Dot and its reporters have received over the past two and half years have been bogus. — But the one we received Monday was the most peculiar to date.

Discussion: SocialTimes

Eric Johnson / Re/code:

Some Game Companies Pay for Play on Conan's “Clueless Gamer” Skits … The gaming world has been good to Conan O'Brien in the past year and a half. The late-night talk show host's glib (and often hilarious) videogame reviews, “Clueless Gamer,” have become a viral sensation, racking up millions of views online.

Discussion: @jeffgerstmann, Forbes, Polygon and Digital Spy

Al Jazeera English:

Peter Greste's letter from Egyptian jail — Al Jazeera reporter tells the ordeals of his two colleagues, held in a draconian “Scorpion prison”. — Writing from Tora Prison, Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste has outlined the fate of his fellow journalists, detained for two weeks without charge in Egypt.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera Blogs, @hamishnews, Poynter and Guardian

Benedict Evans:

As tech, media, and telecom collide, ignorance of any one sector leads to failures like Joost — Ignorance — “However vast any person's basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.” - Italo Calvino

Discussion: @kevinweil, @nathanchubbard, @h4ryb, @rubenharris, @mccarthyryanj, @jchengwsj, @minethatdata, @stevesi and @soundboy

Evan Osnos / New Yorker:

Why China Needs to Rethink the Way It Treats the Foreign Press — An unusual collaborative investigation by journalists in the United States, Britain, Germany, Hong Kong, and elsewhere has refocussed attention on one of the Chinese government's most neuralgic issues: the private wealth of top leaders and their families.

Discussion: @adamgoldmanwp, Softpedia News and @icijorg

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Jury finds Courtney Love not liable in landmark Twitter defamation case — Courtney Love Wins Twitter Defamation Trial — After eight days of testimony, the singer prevails in a trailblazing case. — Courtney Love — On Friday, a California jury decided that Courtney Love …

Discussion: SPIN, Gigaom, NBCNews, ParisLemon, @eriqgardner, Poynter, Business Insider and Twitchy

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

In the latest battle to profit from control of the internet, the consumer is stuck in the middle — On a message board under a thread titled, “Is Comcast blocking Netflix,” customers of the nation's largest ISP are complaining about the poor quality of Netflix streaming during evening hours and wondering what's going on.

Discussion: The Verge

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

As part of Time Warner Cable deal, Charter CEO tentatively offers up NY systems to Comcast — Charter CEO Signals Openness in Push For A Time Warner Cable Deal — Cable Operator Willing To Give Up New York-Area Systems to Rival Comcast, Sources Say — Charter Communications Inc. might …

Discussion: @angryarb and @shaliniwsj