By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 14, 2019 | What is the ideal length of an informative newspaper column?
People have different thoughts on this.
Some would say long enough to get your idea through and into the minds of readers.
Another way of thinking is that the name implies the length: a column, top to bottom of a page of your newspaper.
That even can be problematic, since some newspapers have six column formats, others have eight column formats. Some are full size, while others are tabloid.The word count would vary because of the column width (and of course, type size.)
We tend to be of the Ron Martin School of Column Length: the shorter, the better. He was the editor who introduced more “entry points” in The Atlanta Constitution by having the staff produce more stories, all of fewer words. That made for more headlines, hence, more entry points, and he felt, as I now do, more readership and a far better newspaper.
But now the Atlanta newspaper has gotten away from this Martin School. Today it apparently believes in the long, long, stories, essentially lots of gray type. We bet most people don’t fully read these go-on-forever stories, because of their extreme length. Some point out it’s cheaper to have long stories to fill white space instead of lots of shorter stories. Probably true. But that doesn’t pass the quality test.
Down in Blakely, Billy Fleming uses only about a half a column each week to get his thoughts across. He may write the shortest column in Georgia. But you know what he’s trying to get across.
Since beginning Internet publishing, where there is no physical column size to gauge against, my goal is to write “about 500 words” each time in trying to get my ideas across. That started from earlier writing about a page and a half, back when we used typewriters. That’s the length that feels comfortable to me. I’ve come to believe that 500 words in length is about as much of me that readers want to read each time. And after all, you don’t want to bore readers.
National columnists generally write about 750 words per issue. To me that’s a little too long, and uncomfortable.
Sometimes, in approaching a subject, I find myself writing up to 600 words on a single subject. Then, going back and cutting out some words, I see that I can generally improve the story by making the length closer to 500. Less is………..often more.
If you find yourself writing long, long thoughts, consider: are you helping the reader by going on and on, or are you just showing off?
This column is 445 words. Does that get my point across?
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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