I am attached to books in their papery, cloth-bound form. I love reading in the bath, while brushing my teeth, and while trying to get a tan. I'm not particularly interested in a Nook or a Kindle at the moment. The only book I would have really liked to read electronically was Warren Buffet's bio, but I read a majority of that book by a Mexican pool or in a Guatemalan bus, not exactly the best place for an e-reader. The book weighs a few pounds, and was my only arm workout for months.I continue to have a childhood attachment to magazines. I think I can still name most, if not all of the magazines I had subscriptions to as a kid: Highlights, Readers' Digest large type edition, Cricket, Stone Soup, Ranger Rick, Smithsonian, National Geographic, TIME, and Newsweek. My mom knew kids liked to get mail.
The same childhood attachment doesn't extend to newspapers. I don't feel a visceral reaction to the imminent death of newspapers. I came of age in a time when so many stories broke on the internet, I would be fine without a physical newspaper. I do not think I'd be fine without the journalism the newspaper represents. As a person who prefers bullet points to paragraphs and complete sentences, I'm in constant admiration of the labor that goes into reporting and the process of turning information into a well-written story.
I learned about www.longform.org on Slate (article here). The site, founded by Max Linsky and Aaron Lammer (pictured right), is what it sounds like, long-form stories from newspapers and magazines, posted without ads or navigation. It's supposed to look great on the iPhone. There's usually one of these articles per month in a magazine, and occasionally in the paper. Longform.org presents the best of these in one place. I like the older articles, there is an Esquire article from 1966 I've marked 'to read.' It's unlikely I'd ever read Esquire, let alone a story from 1966, if not for the website.
This morning, on my morning news trawl, I read a April 19th NYT Magazine article on Mike Allen, the Politico reporter. The story takes 12 page clicks to get through, and I now have to suffer the annoying NYT suggested articles that pop up in the lower right corner. About 8 pages through, I thought this would be perfect for longform.org. I opened up a new tab and looked up how to suggest an article. Before sending it in, I did a search to see if the article was already there. It was. I felt strangely content, knowing that I understood Linksy and Lammer's mission, and that we were on the same page.
