We now live in a world where ‘BREAKING NEWS!’ flashes across screens every few minutes, where punchy one-liners and bite-sized ‘content’ are served up to be skimmed and scrolled past before the kettle’s boiled.
I don’t deny these quick-hit pieces have their place. They inform, they amuse, they give people something to glance at in the supermarket queue. But they don’t satisfy those of us who love to read; to sit with words, turn them over, and take in a story told with care and detail.
That’s why I’m so invested in the long read.
The kind of writing that doesn’t just skim the surface but digs deep. Writing that doesn’t tell you what to think in two sentences but opens a door into someone’s world, experience, or ideas.
A good long read has texture. It has space for detours and tangents, for the small details that make a person or a place come alive.
It’s not afraid to ask you to sit down and give it your time. And in return, it gives you something of substance: a story that lingers in your mind, a perspective that makes you pause, or a voice that feels as if it’s talking directly to you.
This is why I’m about to launch a new series of blogs that embrace this approach. Longer, more in-depth studies and conversations with people. They’ll read more like feature pieces: detailed, reflective, personal. A chance to hear lives, memories, and lessons in full, not just the tweet-sized fragments.
My hope is that these pieces will stand apart from the constant churn of quick-hit media and instead offer something readers can settle into, perhaps even return to more than once.
It’s not just nostalgia for a slower, more thoughtful form of journalism that drives me. I believe long reads matter because they respect the complexity of human experience. Every life has layers, contradictions, surprises. You can’t capture that in 280 characters or yet another (shudder) ‘Top Five Tips’ list.
Long-form writing allows those complexities to breathe. It offers a stage for the unhurried telling of stories-and for the equally unhurried reading of them.
Of course, I know the current media landscape is dominated by the opposite. There’s a seemingly endless appetite for quick consumption: trending videos, snack-sized articles, thirty-second explainers. The hype around apps like TikTok or X thrives on brevity and immediacy. And yes, these things serve a purpose. They connect, they amuse, they sometimes even inspire.
But they rarely endure.
They’re fireworks in the night sky-dazzling for a second, then gone.
Contrast that with the experience of sitting down with a long read: a thoughtful essay, an investigative piece, a memoir in miniature. These are the words that don’t vanish but settle into you, the ones you mull over long after you’ve read the last line.
They offer not just information but perspective, not just soundbites but substance.
And here’s the exciting thing: longer writing is quietly making a comeback. Many newspapers, magazines, and online platforms have discovered that their most-read pieces aren’t always the quick updates but the slow, careful stories that run to several thousand words. Readers are proving that they do have the appetite for depth. They want to understand, not just react. They want to read, not just scroll. Perhaps this is the beginning of a renaissance for serious, thoughtful words ; a quiet rejection of the shallow in favour of the substantial.
For me, this is heartening. It validates what I’ve long believed: that people don’t need everything reduced, simplified, or cut down. Given the chance, readers are more than capable of engaging with work that takes time. In fact, many crave it. They want writing that honours their intelligence, their curiosity, their humanity.
So, as I prepare to launch my new series of longer blogs, I do so with optimism. I believe there is an audience out there who will welcome these pieces, who will sit with them, and who will find something worthwhile in the words. They might not be flashy, they might not scream for attention, but they will be real: genuine conversations, carefully told stories, a space for reflection.
So, watch this space. These feature-length blogs will be starting soon, and I’d love to hear from you in the meantime. If you have ideas, thoughts, or suggestions of people whose stories should be told in depth, please do get in touch.
And, as always, if you enjoy what you read here, share it, spread the word, and subscribe. The more people we reach, the stronger the case for words that last.
The long read is not dead. Far from it. It is alive, well, and, I’d argue, needed now more than ever.
