Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith’s long-form stories competing against data, chatter and noise
Washington Post |
Nov. 3, 2009 7:45 a.m.
"Gary Smith writes very long stories for a living," Joel Achenbach writes."They run 8,000 words. He crafts four of them a year for Sports Illustrated. He is a throwback in what we will call for the millionth time the Age of Twitter." Achenbach writes that while Smith’s styles competes against "data, chatter and noise," Smith doesn’t think he’s a dinosaur. Yet, Smith says he is concerned that the long-form narrative perhaps doesn’t translate well to a computer screen. "You’re on the Web and the Internet all day, and you got your trigger finger on that Scroll Downbutton," Smith says. "And you’re looking to move material across the screen. Move-and-skim is the mood you’re in. . . . A story curls you back into yourself and you need a special time and place and setting and mode for that. If it becomes all one smear with your work life and checking your e-mail, your Facebook, it’s lost all its reason for being."
