Today’s topic is journalistic minimalism. (I’m for it.)
I just clicked on an article (from Yahoo/New York Times) about a person who did something pretty interesting. At least, that’s what I thought I clicked on.
What I found were two or three paragraphs on the interesting person, followed by 35 to 40 more paragraphs on a bunch of stuff I didn’t care about at all.
Moments of my life seeped away, as I scrolled and skimmed.
There were quotes and references from:
- financial analysts
- psychologists
- professors, associate professors, and scholars
- economic advisers
- consulting groups
- warehouse store spokespeople
- industry professionals
- retailers
- researchers
- magazine articles
- more psychologists, more professors, and more analysts
- a film maker
- and… my personal favorite irrelevant commenter… a “home entertainment adviser”.
My scrolling paid off. The end of the article returned briefly to the interesting person, with a link to her blog.
If you are interested: Tammy Strobel is the interesting person, what she did was downsize her life to the extreme, and her blog is called rowdykittens.com. I like her blog. It has a lot to do with simplicity, and I’m all for that.
All I needed were the two or three paragraphs that were actually about her, and the blog link. So why did I need to scroll through an endless stream of quotes and tangentially related information?
Sorry, Yahoo/New York Times…I’m not interested in what a warehouse store spokesperson, a consulting group, or a home entertainment adviser have to say about…well, about anything.
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