This essay explores the modern quandary of how to successfully produce long-form narrative journalism for the internet. By ‘successfully’ I mean producing narratives in a way that engages people, igniting their passions and imagination, and fostering deep listening (Clarke 2012; Joseph 2010: 83). The ambiguous meaning of ‘long-form’ provides the substance for what follows. The essay’s rubric begins with journalism, but its ideas and arguments are intended to trespass the borderlines of nomenclature to what may otherwise be termed literary journalism, creative nonfiction, reportage, true storytelling or, in some cases, simply art.
This essay looks at the internet through a media ecology lens in order better to understand the logic of online communication, and argues that still photography provides a potent platform for long-form narrative journalism on the net; however this argument is founded on a deeper, thornier argument, based on the ambiguity of the term ‘long-form’. I argue that in the age of digital media our understanding of ‘long-form’ must extend beyond its descriptive meaning to encompass a broader, moral category of communication. It is the ambiguity of digital long-form, and the possibility of a social definition for this mode of narrative that is the motivation for what follows.
