A cautionary message from someone who used to think long form content equals quality and indepth coverage:
Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table.
Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limits. Less editing skills required and more importantly, the longer you stay on page, the better their metrics.
So the content tends to be way longer with more passages that do not really add anything to the central message. Most of them are approaching novellas in length.
At one point in time, this became such a big time sink for me, I wrote a firefox extension to warn me how long the page was and how long I spent on it. I am a moderately good reader and still some of these articles would typically take 45 mins to finish.
One heuristic I follow nowadays:
Before reading, I think about what my purpose of this article is, what I hope to learn from this exercise: (It could just even be entertainment)
A few mins in, I see if this purpose is being fulfilled. If yes, I continue. If not, I just bail out.
Yes, it's mainly because Google started using a similar heuristic a few years ago: length equals quality. Or so the SEO world concluded. It may not have been true; correlation != causation is not a popular concept in SEO. The result is publishers and marketers padding content to achieve some imaginary ideal length. It's why recipes, for example, have hundreds of words of irrelevant crap at the beginning.
That said, the long-form essay is an ancient genre—much older than the modern magazine article—and they have always been filled with "irrelevant" asides, tangents, artistic flourishes, and so on. Concisely conveying their "central message" wasn't the primary point of the form, and people who enjoyed that type of essay wouldn't expect a linear explanation of the topic. The prose style, imaginative complexity, unexpected comparisons, digressions, and explorations were integral to the genre.
Sadly, great essays of that type take a long time to write and edit, and most people aren't interested in reading them. So we get long, repetitive, unimaginative junk instead.
> passages that do not really add anything to the central message
I really hate that thing where the authors tease you with an interesting story like "Mr X did this really interesting thing" and the third paragraph starts with "Mr X grew up in a nondescript village and now we take a detour to highlight how he grew up that has basically nothing to do with the thing I expected to read about here" ...
Anyway ... I grew up in Germany in the early 80s and my parents were completely normal people ...
I really like the Astral Codex blog[1]. It is rationalist blog that features a variety of long-form posts, book reviews, discussions, etc. I don't really know if I consider myself a rationalist or not but I find the posts, discussions, and community to be very stimulating.
Non-tech and non-news (and not even that long), but I have to plug https://www.themarginalian.org/ (previously called "brain pickings").
The author reads voraciously and follows common threads across many works, compiling her thoughts into articles which often contain beautiful prose in their own right.
I often pickup book recs from here that get me into reading about art, poetry, love, spirituality, and more, which I never would otherwise.
In a similar vein is Commonplace by Cedric Chin. Think a Stratechery that analyzes individuals, not corporations. Has great summaries and read/don't read recommendations on book. One of the few blogs I didn't end up unsubscribing from in annoyance.
Three Quarks Daily often surfaces high-quality long form content from a broad ideological cross-section. As others have mentioned, Arts and Letters Daily is often interesting too.
London Review of Books. It’s a print magazine mirrored on its website, but do yourself a favor and leave your phone beyond reach while trying to read long-form. The internet has ruined us all.
Archive.org tends to have out-of-copyright stuff, LibGen newer stuff, but stuff in between (mid to late 20th C) you can often get by "borrowing" the ebook from archive.org for a short time (free, requires sign-up.) LibGen also has the vast majority of scientific papers/journal articles I look for, no matter how old or obscure.
I'm a fan of the Samizdat sources (you could add ZLibrary as well).
Archive.org's holdings are truly amazing for older works. Newer, in-copyright works can be checked out, though I find the e-reader software, which works well on desktop, is poorly-suited to tablets.
There are numerous other smaller collections focusing on specific topics which may also be useful. Searching for "filetype:pdf", "filetype:epub", or "filetype:djvu" may find ebook formats elsewhere.
> Archive.org tends to have out-of-copyright stuff
Their lending library has lots and lots of in-copyright stuff. With a free account (takes minutes to setup), you can borrow them (read in an online browser, or via DRM-controlled PDF) for an hour or for two weeks. My impression is that they limit simultaneous borrowers to the number of physical copies the Archive possesses.
If it sounds too good to be true, give it a try. It's only drawback is a poor search engine (just use a general one like DuckDuckGo and add "site:archive.org" to your search)
The New Yorker is great https://www.newyorker.com. Amazing writing, so much so that I can be pulled into articles that I wouldn't expect to be interested in. I had a Kindle subscription, but liked it so much I forked out for a print subscription. I find it a real struggle reading long form articles digitally.
The New Yorker certainly is entertaining to read, but their articles are notoriously slanted. Even non-controversial subjects are presented from a polarized standpoint. Its as if the whole purpose of the articles is to misinform the reader just enough to get into an argument with someone on the topic.
The only thing I resent about moving to ebooks from the library is time I wasted on second rate content from the internet.
I have seven library cards and I can read almost anything for free. If none have what I want, they will often order it and notify me when it arrives. All from my sweet Gesture chair. Also Kanopy has wonderful classes for free.
I've slowly come to the same conclusion, though partially in the sense of audiobooks. When someone makes a book, even if it's a relatively short one, that usually means they know enough about the subject and have something valuable enough to say, regardless of whether one agrees with or enjoys the content for its entertainment value.
Although there can be good long-ish form content on the internet, there's simply too much incentive to spew loosely connected ideas that aren't fully formed and serve mostly to get attention. And a lot of it really is just chum to get clicks, however nicely it's presented.
The way I see it, written content on the internet went the way of TED talks. I remember a time when TED was popular, at least in my social class, and now it's pretty widely mocked not only for being vapid but by lowering the barrier to entry via TEDx. Medium is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
I recently discovered https://expmag.com but can't really tell yet, since it's too fresh in my bookmarks. I enjoyed the article about clothes in landfills though (mentioned a while ago on HN).
Still the same old places mostly. Harper's. Rolling Stone. NY Review of Books. Lots of podcasts, especially ones that go through a long story in several episodes, for example "Deep Cover" and "Buried Truths". Books.
I'm getting tired of long-form content that wanders around the point. That's just taking a small subject and adding words. I like long form when the subject demands it and its complexity makes the long form useful.
In the past few months I spent a lot of time consuming content from these two sources:
- https://fasterthanli.me, already quite popular on HN. Amos articles are often really long and have lot of details, they read like adventures and I love that.
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing, Old New Thing by Raymond Chen at Microsoft. He’s writing articles since ~20 years and has a lot of really cool anecdotes regarding low level Windows stuff.
I stopped trying to find platforms with long form content, personal blogs is the only thing that works for me (and HN, but that’s an addiction more than anything else :p).
What do you think of the signal to noise ratio of the JRE podcast? It seems like he does minimal prep and just wings it with the idea that his natural curiosity will make up for it.
yes, they are 2.5hrs+ long, but IMO at least half of it is chit-chat and irrelevant to the guests knowledge often about fitness/hunting/deer/monkeys. I prefer much more focused podcasts, where the interview has prepared a series of well targeted questions.
Funny that I interpreted the original "long-form content" as being writing. Rogan's podcasts are certainly long, multi-hour sessions, but tend to wander fairly aimlessly and don't really have a central thesis or topic that they stick to. This is unlike most traditional "long form" writing that I assumed OP was looking for.
Try some of William F. Buckley's old Firing Line episodes, available on YouTube.
I really only listen to Rogan for two types of guests: comedians I like and physicists. The episodes for the latter are always fantastic. Brian Cox, Sean Carroll, Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, Neil deGrasse Tyson, plus a couple more. He's even had Roger Penrose on.
Some of my favorites have already been mentioned: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist. But one missing jewel of great long-form stories told with excellent writing is:
[+] [-] sharmi|4 years ago|reply
Long form content in magazines still used to have limited pages. So there needed to be a balance between information and prose. So even in long prose, the content was well edited, every sentence brought something important to the table.
Nowadays, on the web, an article could have infinite length without any limits. Less editing skills required and more importantly, the longer you stay on page, the better their metrics.
So the content tends to be way longer with more passages that do not really add anything to the central message. Most of them are approaching novellas in length.
At one point in time, this became such a big time sink for me, I wrote a firefox extension to warn me how long the page was and how long I spent on it. I am a moderately good reader and still some of these articles would typically take 45 mins to finish.
One heuristic I follow nowadays: Before reading, I think about what my purpose of this article is, what I hope to learn from this exercise: (It could just even be entertainment)
A few mins in, I see if this purpose is being fulfilled. If yes, I continue. If not, I just bail out.
[+] [-] Veen|4 years ago|reply
That said, the long-form essay is an ancient genre—much older than the modern magazine article—and they have always been filled with "irrelevant" asides, tangents, artistic flourishes, and so on. Concisely conveying their "central message" wasn't the primary point of the form, and people who enjoyed that type of essay wouldn't expect a linear explanation of the topic. The prose style, imaginative complexity, unexpected comparisons, digressions, and explorations were integral to the genre.
Sadly, great essays of that type take a long time to write and edit, and most people aren't interested in reading them. So we get long, repetitive, unimaginative junk instead.
[+] [-] fho|4 years ago|reply
I really hate that thing where the authors tease you with an interesting story like "Mr X did this really interesting thing" and the third paragraph starts with "Mr X grew up in a nondescript village and now we take a detour to highlight how he grew up that has basically nothing to do with the thing I expected to read about here" ...
Anyway ... I grew up in Germany in the early 80s and my parents were completely normal people ...
[+] [-] kirso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marto1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unfolding|4 years ago|reply
[1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
[+] [-] mannykannot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] princeali_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnolens|4 years ago|reply
The author reads voraciously and follows common threads across many works, compiling her thoughts into articles which often contain beautiful prose in their own right. I often pickup book recs from here that get me into reading about art, poetry, love, spirituality, and more, which I never would otherwise.
[+] [-] sooheon|4 years ago|reply
https://commoncog.com/blog/
[+] [-] Veen|4 years ago|reply
https://3quarksdaily.com/
https://www.aldaily.com/
And, while I'm commenting, some of my favorite Substacks who tend to write long content are:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
https://justinehsmith.substack.com/
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
https://razib.substack.com/
https://www.theinsight.org/
[+] [-] kp25|4 years ago|reply
- https://moretothat.com/ by Lawrence Yeo
- https://psyche.co/
- https://aeon.co/
- https://www.quantamagazine.org/
I didn't realise till now, I read at least 2-3 articles a week from the above list. Well written long form content.
[+] [-] adonovan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yesenadam|4 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/
https://libgen.rs/
Archive.org tends to have out-of-copyright stuff, LibGen newer stuff, but stuff in between (mid to late 20th C) you can often get by "borrowing" the ebook from archive.org for a short time (free, requires sign-up.) LibGen also has the vast majority of scientific papers/journal articles I look for, no matter how old or obscure.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
Archive.org's holdings are truly amazing for older works. Newer, in-copyright works can be checked out, though I find the e-reader software, which works well on desktop, is poorly-suited to tablets.
Other sources of legal works include:
- Project Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/ (60k books)
- Standard Ebooks: very-well formatted quality ebook, largely public domain https://standardebooks.org/
- Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/ Public-domain works, downloadable in ePub and other formats.
There are numerous other smaller collections focusing on specific topics which may also be useful. Searching for "filetype:pdf", "filetype:epub", or "filetype:djvu" may find ebook formats elsewhere.
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
Their lending library has lots and lots of in-copyright stuff. With a free account (takes minutes to setup), you can borrow them (read in an online browser, or via DRM-controlled PDF) for an hour or for two weeks. My impression is that they limit simultaneous borrowers to the number of physical copies the Archive possesses.
If it sounds too good to be true, give it a try. It's only drawback is a poor search engine (just use a general one like DuckDuckGo and add "site:archive.org" to your search)
[+] [-] 650|4 years ago|reply
formerly known as Slate Star Codex prior to doxxing by Cade Metz at the New York Times.
[+] [-] waingake|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marsa|4 years ago|reply
which is a shame because the writing is generally good as you note.
[+] [-] dotancohen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoblack|4 years ago|reply
I have seven library cards and I can read almost anything for free. If none have what I want, they will often order it and notify me when it arrives. All from my sweet Gesture chair. Also Kanopy has wonderful classes for free.
[+] [-] ravenstine|4 years ago|reply
Although there can be good long-ish form content on the internet, there's simply too much incentive to spew loosely connected ideas that aren't fully formed and serve mostly to get attention. And a lot of it really is just chum to get clicks, however nicely it's presented.
The way I see it, written content on the internet went the way of TED talks. I remember a time when TED was popular, at least in my social class, and now it's pretty widely mocked not only for being vapid but by lowering the barrier to entry via TEDx. Medium is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
[+] [-] geoblack|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtmail|4 years ago|reply
https://www.instapaper.com/daily (contains some automated spamming, flooding submissions to trick the popularity scoring I guess)
[+] [-] riidom|4 years ago|reply
I recently discovered https://expmag.com but can't really tell yet, since it's too fresh in my bookmarks. I enjoyed the article about clothes in landfills though (mentioned a while ago on HN).
[+] [-] projektfu|4 years ago|reply
I'm getting tired of long-form content that wanders around the point. That's just taking a small subject and adding words. I like long form when the subject demands it and its complexity makes the long form useful.
[+] [-] dgellow|4 years ago|reply
- https://fasterthanli.me, already quite popular on HN. Amos articles are often really long and have lot of details, they read like adventures and I love that.
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing, Old New Thing by Raymond Chen at Microsoft. He’s writing articles since ~20 years and has a lot of really cool anecdotes regarding low level Windows stuff.
I stopped trying to find platforms with long form content, personal blogs is the only thing that works for me (and HN, but that’s an addiction more than anything else :p).
[+] [-] CodeGlitch|4 years ago|reply
TRIGGERnometry: https://audioboom.com/channels/4991237.rss
Lex Fridman Podcast: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur: https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:23460834...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ADV2256857693
[+] [-] kzrdude|4 years ago|reply
- Fall of Civilizations podcast (Has few but some absolutely gorgeous, long episodes).
- People I mostly admire
- Freakonomics (earlier episodes better than current IMO)
- The Joy of X
- Numberphile and The 3b1b podcast
- In Our Time (BBC)
[+] [-] Gareth321|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillpenguin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zmajche|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StoneFox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatkey|4 years ago|reply
Arts and Letters Daily: https://www.aldaily.com/
Lit mags: LRB, NYRB, Paris Review, McSweeneys
Lit-adjacent mags: Harpers, Laphams Quarterly
I usually follow a lot of these via RSS, and subscribe to some.
Beyond that, several newsletters. Astral códex ten (as already mentioned) and tomas pueyo’s uncharted territories come to mind.
The Browser is easily the best reading money I’ve spent in a long time. $5/mo and it finds such good articles.
[+] [-] hersko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pygar|4 years ago|reply
yes, they are 2.5hrs+ long, but IMO at least half of it is chit-chat and irrelevant to the guests knowledge often about fitness/hunting/deer/monkeys. I prefer much more focused podcasts, where the interview has prepared a series of well targeted questions.
[+] [-] wnolens|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayboise|4 years ago|reply
Try some of William F. Buckley's old Firing Line episodes, available on YouTube.
[+] [-] tambeb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stephenhuey|4 years ago|reply
Texas Monthly
https://www.texasmonthly.com/
[+] [-] kirso|4 years ago|reply
Its not sensational, but just well researched and put together. A good example is bootstrapping buyouts: https://neckar.substack.com/p/reginald-lewis-bootstrapping-b...
Cedric's commoncog already mentioned here.
And second these resources:
- https://waitbutwhy.com/ by Tim Urban
- https://moretothat.com/ by Lawrence Yeo
- https://psyche.co/
- https://aeon.co/
- https://www.quantamagazine.org/