Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

longform.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#11

Post by 1123581321 »

spoonjim wrote: post #10
1123581321 wrote: post #2

Longform was a respected service and I wish them the best focusing on the podcast. My use of Longform declined as long, intricate articles became something nearly any publication could pull off, but I think that Longform deserves some credit for bringing about that change in journalism. There are new forms of journalism emerging and new curators will appear to popularize them.

What made nearly any publication able to pull of long, intricate, articles?

Multiple factors, but I think the biggest are the format becoming more imitable over time, better baseline design tools and CMSes for multi-section content, and automation/semi-automation of short form articles to make room to focus on big hits. There is also some survivorship bias as search engine improvements and changed tastes through sharing have diminished or forced sale of content mills.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#12

Post by 1123581321 »

axiomdata316 wrote: post #3
1123581321 wrote: post #2

Longform was a respected service and I wish them the best focusing on the podcast. My use of Longform declined as long, intricate articles became something nearly any publication could pull off, but I think that Longform deserves some credit for bringing about that change in journalism. There are new forms of journalism emerging and new curators will appear to popularize them.

Do you have any recommendations for similar services that aggregate quality long form articles?

There are so many ways to collect them now, e.g., there are hundreds of twitter accounts that reliably share 'interesting articles' and nearly all are long form anymore.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#14

Post by tonyedgecombe »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #9
optimalsolver wrote: post #7

Alternatives: Arts & Letters Daily : https://aldaily.com/ Aeon: https://aeon.co/ Nautilus: https://nautil.us/ Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/

I might have to try out that Hacker News thing. Sounds interesting.

Be careful, it's slightly addictive.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#15

Post by jart »

drx wrote: post #6

That's a shame. Fortunately, it looks like the archive will stay up: https://twitter.com/aaronlammer/status/1478749874053169154

It's a bunch of links to Wired and GQ. Maybe they wouldn't have needed to shut down if only Yahoo hadn't killed del.icio.us which used to be the social media platform for bookmarks. I'm still crying on the inside over that.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#16

Post by brazzy »

jeppesen-io wrote: post #8

I feel bad, I tried it but if I'm honest I couldn't focus on long form Not a good thing

TBH, a lot of "long form" articles are just shitty. Randomly interrupting a current event story with unrelated biographic episodes of the protagonists does not magically result in a more valuable, high-brow form of reporting.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#18

Post by jmnicolas »

Never heard of this site before, but if I could hazard a guess to why they're shutting down, who nowadays has the time to read a long text for leisure? Not many people I guess.

My opinion is that the information loop has entered hyper velocity and anything long form cannot be mainstream anymore.

If I take my case as an example, the only activity where I focus for more than 5 minutes is coding. I skim news just reading the titles, occasionally reading an article, I can't watch a full length movie without opening a browser on the second screen, I listen to audio books while driving.

Re: Longform.org is shutting down its article recommendations service

#19

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jmnicolas wrote: post #18

Never heard of this site before, but if I could hazard a guess to why they're shutting down, who nowadays has the time to read a long text for leisure? Not many people I guess. My opinion is that the information loop has entered hyper velocity and anything long form cannot be mainstream anymore. If I take my case as an example, the only activity where I focus for more than 5 minutes is coding. I skim news just readin…

Really?

The short story is now a dead artform. Even 'trilogies' aren't a thing anymore - anything less than five thick tomes doesn't sell.

Movies are now three hours long, but even that seems to be a half-measure and the cinematic form is now being replaced by miniseries.

(I remember when a 90 hour movie was considered long.)

Post reply on HN