Most newspaper stories are still too long

The news cognoscenti gasped when the Columbia Journalism Review recently reported that the nation’s leading newspapers aren’t writing as many long stories as they used to. But I think most stories are still way too windy.



In a moment, I’ll tell you why, as briefly as I can. First the background: 



Tallying yarns topping 2,000 words on Factiva, CJR found the number of long-form stories at