The Long And The Short Of It

One of the shibboleths of the journalism racket, back in my day, back in the day of dead-tree media, was that “Every story you are interested in is too short. Every story you are not interested in is too long.”

The promise of the Internet was to end that dilemma. Physical media no longer imposed length limits. And Hyperlinks (as we used to call links) meant that, instead of a capsule review of prior events in each new story, you could simply point at the prior stories. Who knew TL;DR would become a thing.

Hard as it may seem to believe, I try to limit my article length in this column. When I finish an essay, if it’s over 250 words, I try to cut it or trim it. Lately (as with AI this week) I find myself helplessly writing long, then determinedly splitting up the results.

Maybe it’s like the cliffhanger in a serial: tune in next week to find out what happens.