Tristan Ferne of the BBC’s R&D dept. (Yes they have one) has a great piece about how the 800-word article is still the primary way news sites publish.  

But back in 2014 research from Quartz found that “the place between 500 and 800 words is the place you don’t want to be”. They found that this length lacked both the focus and share-ability of a short piece and the pay-off of a longer piece. This length of article isn’t distinctive and is often duplicative.

With the options that publishing to digital provides it can be both a blessing and a curse.  Having to publish content that will generate eyeballs to several platforms at first seems daunting but thanks to technology it can be overcome.   There are quite a few options for news organizations to present stories in a way that can be compelling and informative. If we are to stop the rise of ‘fake news’ and misrepresentations of the truth we have to look into better options. How they can do that with the current financial crisis continues to be a challenge.

.Well worth a read to get an idea of what the current landscape looks like, I was unaware of many of the options, many I find quite interesting.