The super coy, slow-reveal style of article writing and why it fails.

[Brainiac]

Ever find that some writers think it's clever or cute to bury the topic paragraph deep in the article? And it never works.

Here's an example from today's New York Times: "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious" It's about an old journal of Jung's just discovered.
It goes rambling on for a full 1500 words before the topic sentence where you find out what the book is about.
But the writer has placed her teaser 580 words in, where she starts talking about Carl Jung.

Does she think we are so hooked by her skill spinning the yarn that we wait with bated breath for the answer? And those weaker or less skilled at bating are literally fainting with anticipation?

Then she must have been surprised to see her masterpiece tale in print. Because the NYT page editors have splashed their front page with this sub-headline:
"The Holy Grail of the Unconscious
What the unearthing of Carl Jung’s Red book is doing to the Jungs."
And when we get to the page we see two pictures of Jung, with captions, and links to"Times Topics: Carl Gustav Jung"

So the long long long would-be secret was all for naught.

And I have to wonder why the editors let this happen. In the local paper here, the San Jose Mercury-News, they do this in the Sunday sections every weekend, and daily for those multipart, multi-day special assignment series.

The topic is completely hidden until you are bored stiff and irritated by the conceit, because you've seen the headline and the picture captions and the call outs in bold, and already know the "surprise."

I can only presume that the writers never read the paper, and have no clue how foolish they end up, the last person to catch on to their own mystery.

[Reply]

Don't most long articles start out that way? Certainly reading through Nat Geo or Time or similar in the past, I remember long intros -- sometimes to reveal a secret, sometimes just to set up a backdrop.

That article is from the NY Times Magazine, which I assume is different from the NY Times paper.

Besides, it's just a writing style, is it not? I do like topic sentences, but I if I wanted something in inverted pyramid style I'd go to a daily paper, if I wanted something outlined and then broken down, I'd go to the Wikipedia, and if I wanted something I could read leisurely on the crapper, magazines and their long (but occasionally eloquent) intros serve that timeslot well

ETA: I'm trying to say that sometimes it's ok to say "Give me the whole story, one part at a time" while preferring "Cut the crap and get to the chase" the rest of the time.

[Beware of Doug]

I loathe coyness in writing. It's a low gimmick. I would think The Times (including The Times Magazine) would feel much the same way.

[Stan Shmenge]

It's a disease that free weeklies seem especially prone to. I haven't been in Chicago for decades, so I don't know about the Reader, but here, LA Weekly does it all the time. They love to couple it with a non descriptive headline, just for extra pain. Look asshole, if I can't figure out what you are talking about by paragraph three, then I am moving on. Journalism school 101.

[Anaamika]

When I was taught my writing skills, I was taught that you had to put the hook early, or people would stop reading. Look at that, when I am reading something and the hook doesn't come fast, I stop reading. If it's a book, I am willing to wait for a while, but it doesn't always pay off. But articles? No way.

[Neidhart]

The Washington Post does it all the time too. Newspaper articles are supposed to contain the 5 W's in the first paragraph, but now most of the pieces start out, "Joe Blow sat at his desk drinking his coffee . . ." Annoying as shit when you're just skimming.

Only thing I can figure, it's a product of the post-Watergate '70s era when journalists started thinking of themselves as all Hip and Relevant and not bound by the boring old rules of their predecessors.

[pulykamell]

Originally Posted by Neidhart

The Washington Post does it all the time too. Newspaper articles are supposed to contain the 5 W's in the first paragraph, but now most of the pieces start out, "Joe Blow sat at his desk drinking his coffee . . ." Annoying as shit when you're just skimming.

That's usually done in features and longer articles. It's a standard technique called the delayed lead. Hard news should have all the info upfront in an inverted pyramid style, but for other stories, it may take a paragraph or several before you hit the "nut graf." (Where the informative lead is.)

I don't really see anything wrong with the style.

[sjc]

I see nothing wrong with soft leads in places like the New York Times Magazine and have often seen them used effectively, but the particular article linked to seems to me to be doing a bad job of it. I think to be effective (especially in a medium like the NYT Magazine) the intro has to give a bit more information than is given in this one. You want to set the scene specifically without necessarily giving away the whole story. What this article's intro does is start off with a more or less generic scene.

[Cisco]

I want the hook early, but I hate the style that's en vogue now where they just lazily cut the 2nd or 3rd to last paragraph and paste it at the opening.

[Brainiac]

The odd part is that the hook is provided by the editor to negate the writer's slow windup delivery. One of them should realize what the other is doing and sync up.

[Brainiac]

Originally Posted by Cisco

I want the hook early, but I hate the style that's en vogue now where they just lazily cut the 2nd or 3rd to last paragraph and paste it at the opening.

YES! That's awful. It's exactly like the teasers on the nightly news. Don't tell me the whole story except the clincher, and make me wait until the reveal at the end of the newscast, usually a letdown. Any sidebar in a newspaper or magazine should have extra material, not the same stuff recycled out of order. Again, the editor changes the order at the expense of the writer.

[GargoyleWB]

It's even worse on NPR pieces. The reporter spins a rambling picturesque scene, foley effects in the background, a hint of a topic, more atmosphere...

Get to the damn point!

[Ruby]

Do you really listen to NPR for a point?

[jackdavinci]

I've been thinking this lately too. It can be somewhat excused in longer essays that are supposed to be prose, but for the most part I think today's writers need to be sent to remedial writing class to relearn the pyramid structure. And that sort of thing in news articles is just inexcusable.

My other pet peeve in news stories is not sourcing info. Rather than saying "this happened" they should be saying "according to X, this happened".

[Reply]

Originally Posted by jackdavinci

My other pet peeve in news stories is not sourcing info. Rather than saying "this happened" they should be saying "according to X, this happened".

Are you sure this wasn't firsthand reporting from the reporter or his company?

[Krokodil]

In newspapers, particularly "hard" news stories, the lead is seldom buried because editors routinely chop paragraphs off for space reasons and they do the chopping from the end and move forward. This is less true of online editions than print editions, but most reporters write in anticipation of this style of editing.

For magazines, especially "soft" feature articles, the first paragraph is a baited hook to persuade the reader to read the rest of the article. It has to be coy. If you can keep the reader reading for more than ten seconds, you have him hooked and if you can't, you don't. A magazine article is essenttially two stories: The linear beginning, middle and end, and an extended telling of the climactic scene. You begin with a few grafs of the climax, then tell the beginning of the story, go back to the climax, tell the middle, finish the climax and tell the end.

Think of William Miller's Rolling Stone article in Almost Famous. He opens with a plane that's about to crash. If that doesn't convince you to read the unremarkable history of a mid-level band coming to grips with its artistic limitations, what will?

[jackdavinci]

Originally Posted by Reply

Are you sure this wasn't firsthand reporting from the reporter or his company?

It still needs a source, unless the reporter themselves was a witness, in which case that should be indicated.

[Superhal]

Originally Posted by pulykamell

That's usually done in features and longer articles. It's a standard technique called the delayed lead. Hard news should have all the info upfront in an inverted pyramid style, but for other stories, it may take a paragraph or several before you hit the "nut graf." (Where the informative lead is.)

I don't really see anything wrong with the style.

This. It's just a style of news writing ("feature") that is longer than a standard article.

Imho, it's just a way to fill up space and writers sometimes get paid by the word.

[Ximenean]

It reminds me of that thing they do in TV documentaries - "For physicist Karl Schmidt this was to be no ordinary Monday - he would discover something that would turn the theory of gravitation on its head." Thirty minutes and a couple more of these teasers later, you're still waiting to see what Karl discovered.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

Originally Posted by Superhal

This. It's just a style of news writing ("feature") that is longer than a standard article.

Imho, it's just a way to fill up space and writers sometimes get paid by the word.

Nah. News consists of the usual "who, what, where, why and how?". Features do the same, but with background and color. People want to know more, and features provide that.

How many times do you read something on the Internet, for example, and find that you want to know more? It's the difference between reading a blurb from the AP wire and getting the details at Slate.com.

[Superhal]

Originally Posted by Airman Doors, USAF

Nah. News consists of the usual "who, what, where, why and how?". Features do the same, but with background and color. People want to know more, and features provide that.

How many times do you read something on the Internet, for example, and find that you want to know more? It's the difference between reading a blurb from the AP wire and getting the details at Slate.com.

Wow thanks for straightening me out. I knew that the two years of journalism classes I took in college were pure BS.

[Marley23]

I'd like to thank the OP for "disproving" long form magazine writing. How foolish journalists have been to think that, just because people have been reading this kind of thing for a few hundred years, there might be some people who like it.

It takes a long time to put together a story like the one in the OP. It's not intended to be a news article. Feature stories like this are usually about a slowly developing trend that doesn't make for immediate news, or they're a deeper examination of something that was news recently. Hard news is intended to get the basics to you immediately. This was a very long piece in the Times magazine that you can read over the weekend. They're not intended to be the same thing and it's somewhat pointless to criticize one for not being the other.

That said, I found the start of the Jung book story painfully bad. Dan Brown-on-an-off-day bad. "Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows?" Oof.

Then she must have been surprised to see her masterpiece tale in print. Because the NYT page editors have splashed their front page with this sub-headline:
"The Holy Grail of the Unconscious
What the unearthing of Carl Jung’s Red book is doing to the Jungs."
And when we get to the page we see two pictures of Jung, with captions, and links to"Times Topics: Carl Gustav Jung"

So the long long long would-be secret was all for naught.

And I have to wonder why the editors let this happen.

Is this a serious question? They do this on purpose. They tease the topic on the front page to get you to read the article.

[Brainiac]

Originally Posted by Marley23

I'd like to thank the OP for "disproving" long form magazine writing. How foolish journalists have been to think that, just because people have been reading this kind of thing for a few hundred years, there might be some people who like it.

Nope you missed the point entirely. Long windup may be a valid style, but long windup with a spoiler headline and photo captions is not hundreds of years old. Lazy editing and writers who don't look at the finished piece. Yes, they "tease" on purpose, but that doesn't mean they aren't making the writer a chump at the same time. It's the identical thing we all hate on TV and movie ads that give away too much. Do the famous directors want their clever endings and cherished oneliners revealed out of order? Of course not. Bu they are at the mercy of the studios and distributors.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Brainiac

Nope you missed the point entirely. Long windup may be a valid style, but long windup with a spoiler headline and photo captions is not hundreds of years old. Lazy editing and writers who don't look at the finished piece.

I'm saying it's done that way on purpose. (And it's not the writer's department.) They are giving you some information about the mystery book to get you to read it in the first place, and withholding the rest.