Should the 800-word article be retired? Quartz boss thinks so

Kevin Delaney, the editor in chief of Quartz, says in a Digiday Podcast interview that the 800-word article has got to go.

As Digiday’s Brian Morrissey notes, Delaney wrote many 800-word pieces during his 12 years with the Wall Street Journal. Now, though, Delaney sees the form as a problem in digital media, because digital media isn’t newspapers:

What people read online, when you look at the data, is shorter stuff that’s focused, creative and social with a really good headline. It doesn’t mean it’s unsubstantial. It just means it’s really clear about what’s interesting and focuses on that. A lot of the 800-word stories have been padded out with the B matter. It’s called B matter because it’s B grade, not A matter, which is the focal point of the story.

Here’s a funny thing: A commenter points out that the Digiday story summarizing the podcast interview is 802 words, though my count was 764. At the moment I saw the piece, the lead story on Quartz, Stop comparing Pamela Geller to the murdered staffers of Charlie Hebdo, clocked in at about 780.

The 800-word article is pretty useful. Remember this B/R Blog post from last fall, also based on a Digiday piece? It talked about how Chartbeat data found that when it comes to user engagement, the ideal length for digital stories was around 700 to 800 words. Was it a coincidence that the the classic newspaper story, created without the ability to measure reader behavior, also averaged about that length? Or did the newspaper folks in the old days intuitively understand how people read?

Do you think the 800-word article has got to go? Or is it in our bones?

Full disclosure: As I type this, Quartz’s lead story, Lending Club is long on buzz, short on profits, is only 454 words. This post is a snackable 330.