Why not? Long narratives with a certain exclusivity may pay their authors as much as $100,000 a shot. Reason to celebrate as former New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson, reveals this news as part of her partnership with Steven Brill on a start up venture still to be named.
Writers will be paid advances around $100,000 to produce stories that will be longer than long magazine articles but shorter than books, she said. There will be “one perfect whale of a story” each month and it will be available by subscription.
Of course, we assume that these stories will be available to read on mobile devices.
I am happy that just got my new iPhone 6 Plus, which does make a difference in terms of reading long texts more comfortably than in the smaller iPhone 5.
I will also be interested to see how these robust, long stories are written to accommodate the mobile user. Will they be edited to incorporate more breaks, will there be (as I think it should) secondary readings for those who wish to sample the story content a bit before diving into the long narrative?
I believe Ms. Abramson has a glorious opportunity here to pioneer in the presentation of what she describes as “the perfect whale of a story” for the mobile generation.
Please let it not be a headline, summary and endless text. Remember, this is the era of the journalism of interruptions. Even the most engrossing long narrative is not exempt from them.