Remove the ‘X minutes read’ feature: Why we need to stop apologising for long form content
I realise the irony of writing this on a site where the link preview will automatically produce a neat little ‘x minutes to read’ notification before people even click on this. But this is exactly my point. Why are we constantly apologising for producing long form content? When was it decided that long form content was not for the masses and instead needed to be signposted with warnings that reading this might take longer than five seconds?
Books don’t have ‘x hours to read’ notes on them, and while a movie has a run time or a TV programme has a slot, rarely do we decide on whether we are going to engage with them purely based on the time we have to commit to it. Yet online content has become so ubiquitous and the market so saturated with blogs, webinars, podcasts and more, that somewhere along the line it was decided that the best way to get people to read something was to tell them how much of their time they needed to give in exchange.
To me, this makes no sense. Of course there are of plenty of pieces of short form content that pack a punch and get the message across in a succinct way — but there are also plenty that say very little. Long form content is equally as guilty of this. You can write 1,000 words and only 100 of them are worth reading or deliver any value. Don’t get me started on listicles — Buzzfeed has a lot to answer for on this front.
It’s easy to point a finger at social media and shortened attention spans for causing this need to justify long form content, but I think that’s far too simplistic and a lazy answer. True, sometimes you do just want to have a quick scan of 500 words, get the key information you need and move on, but I believe that if you’re sitting down to read something, you’ve already demonstrated your willingness to invest time. You’ve decided ‘I want to read this article’ and seeing that unhelpful little ’20 minutes to read’ could be the defining factor between clicking on it and not. If we see that and think ‘I haven’t got 20 minutes right now’ we don’t click on it. Doesn’t matter if it actually only takes you 10 minutes or less, you’ve been persuaded away from it.
Side note: how is that figure generated? I’m a particularly fast reader and if I’m looking for specific information in an article I quite often skim read or use a search function to look for key phrases. What about people who use screen readers or similar reading-assistance tech? Is the ‘x minutes’ just an arbitrary number based on average time to read x number of words?
Perhaps the thing that annoys me most about quantifying a piece of content merely by the number of minutes it takes to read is that it treats the potential reader like a child, incapable of focusing on anything for longer than a pre-set time period. Good content, no matter how long or short it is, should capture you, draw you in and deliver that value.
Some of the greatest books ever written are less than 200 pages — and some are well over 600. Both are great pieces of content because they’re not trying to be anything but what they are. It’s no good taking a 2,000 word blog and being told to make it 700 words for no reason other than length. Similarly, you can’t necessarily take a 300 word article and pad it out to 1,500 because you’re not adding anything if you could do it well in 300. Editors know the power of cutting words to improve writing, but there’s a difference between reducing word count for clarity and reducing word count because it’s ‘too long’.
When we reduce content to nothing more than the minutes it takes to read it, we’re devaluing the work of researchers and writers, and we’re doing readers a disservice. Many people are keen to engage with self-development, learn new skills, push their boundaries or reignite an old interest. They have the right mindset and mentality to sit down, read and engage with content, so why are we trying to warn them off by saying that they have to invest their time to learn something? They already know that — it’s why they’re looking for something to read!
In an era where more people are diversifying their skillset and looking to educate themselves, we should be encouraging them to read and learn, not putting them off. We need to stop apologising for writing long form content and putting it out there. Long form and short form content both have their place and serve very different purposes.
One of the best examples of signposting long form content is The Guardian’s Long Read. The Long Read articles are (surprisingly) much longer than an average news piece — and that is okay. The Guardian doesn’t tell you how long it takes to read. It uses the ‘Long Read’ title to signpost that this is a longer piece, and we understand journalists are often on tight deadlines, so maybe read it now if you’ve got time, or come back to it later. The Guardian isn’t trying to cheapen the Long Read by giving it a number or assuming that the readers don’t have the time or inclination to invest in reading one of these pieces. It knows these pieces deliver unique in-depth reporting that supports their other journalism and has a different purpose.
We need to stop apologising for long form content and instead focus on delivering content that has quality and value. Get to know your audience better and understand what they prefer to read, but don’t cater for a mass audience. When you try to please everyone, you please no one. We need to stop assuming that adults can’t focus on things and encourage people instead to take the time to sit and educate themselves, learn something new, and to not be put off by the idea of investing their time in these activities. Time is a precious commodity, it’s true, but surely educating yourself or learning something new is one of the best ways to spend your time? Why would we want to discourage people from that?
When content is good, no matter the length, it will draw in readers and deliver the right message. We always talk about putting focus on quality not quantity — but if you’ve got lots of quality insight, don’t be ashamed to share it.
