{"id":10629,"date":"2007-09-28T14:40:36","date_gmt":"2007-09-28T18:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2007\/09\/28\/10629.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:56:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:56:59","slug":"stretching-out-or-noodling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2007\/09\/28\/stretching-out-or-noodling\/","title":{"rendered":"Stretching Out or Noodling?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Errol Morris has a blog over at the New York Times<\/i>, to which he seems to post about once a month. A few days ago, he posted an essay called Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? (Part One)<\/a>. It's a fascinating piece.\n

It's also about 7,500 words long. I think it's safe to say that the New York Times<\/i> doesn't print a lot of 7,500 word essays. Or 5,000 word essays, come to that. The New Affirmative Action<\/a>, by David Leonhardt, is just about 5,000; it's the big article in the Sunday Magazine. So, maybe one of those articles a week. This is half again the size of that.\n

Of course, it's not printed. The Times<\/i> didn't have to carve out a 7,500-word hole to slip it into. Mr. Morris didn't have to decide early in the process how big the thing would be, nor once the total size was negotiated did he have to carve his writing to fit into the hole. No, he seems to have written pretty much what he wanted to write, and the Times<\/I> could stick it up on the site without affecting any other item at all. No trade-offs. Win-Win. This is new.\n

Mr. Morris could, five years ago, have written a 7,500-word essay that was part one of three or four such essays and put them on his own blog, or photocopied them and used the copies to raise money for a new movie, or he could have saved them up for a book, or he could have found one o the handful of magazines that specialize in 7,500 word essays. Now, he has another option: a blog, but under a major news organizations banner. And the major news organizations can post 7,500 word essays by major cultural critics. It's all good.\n

I have to admit, though, that I wonder if the ability to write extended pieces for major outlets in that fashion is an unmitigated good. Mr. Morris, for instance, leaves in bits of interviews which might well have been elided in a format where space was at a premium. Is making Mr. Morris the editor of his own work a good idea? Yes, because he's damn good at editing. But is making, say, Your Humble Blogger the editor of his own work a good idea?\n\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/i>
\n-Vardibidian. <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Errol Morris has a blog over at the New York Times, to which he seems to post about once a month. A few days ago, he posted an essay called Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? (Part One)….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nytimes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18119,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629\/revisions\/18119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}