tl;dr?*
As hi-tech content-overload overwhelms our biologically ancient brains, which reel under the deluge of social media, print media and on-screen options, we skitter across even short articles like water-bugs on a pond.
We look for the bullet points, or highlighted bits like this one, which summarise what we need to know, allowing us to ignore the rest and…[checks watch, impatient]…get on with our lives.
The thought of reading a whole article (300 words!), let alone an opinion piece stretching to 700-800 words (!!), has us calculating the extra seconds we might consider investing in such a risky time-consuming (two minutes!) activity.
So this book, Stories That Want to be Told – The Long Lede Anthology, published by Penguin, with backing from Copyright Agency and philanthropist Judith Neilson – is definitely kicking against the pricks. Who, these days, would read a few thousand words of long-form journalism that digs deeper, that provides real insight, that gives us intimate access to people we might never otherwise meet and know in this way?
tl;dr amirite?
Well, maybe not. These pieces are written by pros. They hook you (via the ‘lede’ or opening paragraphs), hold you, take you places, and share world-views you’ve never considered. If novelty isn’t the reason most of us read our fiction, then you’re simply reading different forms of the same thing over and over. Maybe it’s worth putting aside your genre fiction and turning off the phone for some quiet time reading a long non-fiction article on, say, the unsolved murder of a Sudanese child refugee, or our terrifyingly tenuous supply chains, or trans power-lifters, or…[checks notes]…uh, cups.
Journalism in the long-form tends to honesty, exposes the writer, and provides context and nuance to topics, which, if listed, you’d probably normally avoid.
But that’s the thing with life – every face you glimpse and glance away from on the train, in the street, at your desk or out the window, has a story that will surprise you, but only if you hang in there and ask the right questions. Like good journalists do.
Stories That Want to be Told gives passionate, thoughtful and hard-working journalists and writers the means to do what they’re supposed to do – to go out from the comfortable confines of the tribe, hunt and gather, and bring back that which they seek or find to show the rest of us.
There has to be a struggle to this hunting and gathering though. Real journalism isn’t sitting around telling us that someone says it’s sunny and someone else says it’s raining; it’s actually going outside, raincoat at the ready, to check. We don’t need more pseudo-journalism, we’re already drowning in stenography; the copying of media releases, and the false balance of ‘he-said, she-said’ fill our news media. We desperately need real journalism as a critical part of our democracy and our lives.
So put down the Murdoch trash, stop watching the Sky After Dark freak show, forget Facebook, ignore Insta. Pick up a copy of The Long Lede Anthology, and park yourself in a quiet corner with a cuppa instead.
The nine writers represented in this anthology will take you places you’ve never been before. That, surely, has to be worth it.
Stories That Want to be Told – The Long Lede Anthology, published by Vintage Australia, Penguin Random House, 2024, ISBN: 978 0 14377 935 3, RRP $29.99
B.P. Marshall is a scriptwriter and author.
*(tl;dr means ‘too long, didn’t read.’)
