In list form, because pfffffffft.
Lately it seems my newsfeed on Facebook is full of a charmingly hipsterish attitude regarding list articles. The words "hack" and "not real journalism" seem to come up a lot, but I'm a perfectly professional writer who is more than capable of laughing off such knocks against a writing style I happen to enjoy, as witnessed in the screencap above.
Setting aside my self-esteem issues for a second, there is really no point in hating on list articles as a whole, nor do they represent the dumbing down of journalism any more than Cosmopolitan or NaturalNews.com do. Which brings me to my first point...
Not All List Articles Are Equal: When people lump all list articles in the world together, mostly they're talking about Buzzfeed, and when it comes to Buzzfeed, the term "list article" is hardly accurate. Here's a perfect example: 14 Ways You're a Modern Day Hustler. Should this article make you weep for more in-depth writing? No, it should make you weep for any writing at all.
Things like this are not articles. They're collections of pictures and gifs with headlines. At best this is a slideshow. All told, if you add up the words in the piece, they clock in at under 300 total, not to mention that if they're strung together in order, it actually becomes a bizarre free-form poem told in the second person. There's also the fact that every word in the title, aside from the number itself, is hyperbolic half-truth.
Simply put, you can't compare something like that to, say, a 2,500-word article from Cracked.com. Just because they both start with a number doesn't mean that they have anything overly substantial in common, any more than different wines taste the same because of the shape of the bottle. In the end, you actually have to read a story and decide its worth (and by proxy the worth of the source). Get used to doing that, to because...
The Internet Really Likes Lists: Did you know that Buzzfeed does actually produce in-depth, quality content like interviews and this piece on the mermaid program at the Florida Aquarium? They do, just like the same guy who brought you the Top 5 Video Game Farts is perfectly capable of turning in 5,000 words on a movie about Dean Corll. So if outlets are able to do things like that, why do the farts and gifs thing?
Because the Internet loves to share lists, and unless you want us to hide all the content behind a pay wall, those pageviews featuring ads are how outlets pay for everything that's generated. Take Chris Lane, for example. After we ran a series of his tour diaries from his days playing in Bozo Porno Circus, he started a blog called Trailer Park Ninja since he got a good response for his writing. His first pieces were well enough received, but when he started doing things in list format, those entries immediately more than doubled in views over the other writings he was putting out.
Hell, my own most successful story on Houston Press was a list of things I want to tell my daughter about sex that don't involve the purity movement. When I say most successful, I mean to the tune of at least hundreds of thousands of views over the next-most successful piece. The Internet has spoken, and it wants a lot of things ranked in order. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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