Journo Inspo: Hey, the Internet is leaking!
Last week in feature writing class, we briefly touched upon the question: What makes a longform article worth reading through? One peer said: an article that you don’t mind reading past the several first paragraphs. A friend shared this really awesome article on Facebook, it’s a really long article from New Republic on Tumblr culture. As an avid user of Tumblr, here are a few reasons I found this article fascinating.
1. Colors, colors galore
The story’s header features all sorts of pixel art related to some of Tumblr users’ cult favorites: pizza, illuminati references, cats and computers. Better yet, when you scroll down the article, the background changes to complement the featured paragraph. The changing backgrounds and pop-up images reflects the interactivity Tumblr users are accustomed to when they scroll through their Tumblr feeds filled with photos, videos and gifs.
2. Relatable reading
The author speaks about the nature of viral content, how and why it’s shared, the strategic ways teens who managed to garner thousands upon thousands of followers (other Tumblr users), their rise and their fall. They not only report on the Tumblr users and employees being spotlighted, but they break down nearly every step of their reporting by sharing links to references readers might not immediately know. They also explain who they had to go through to get certain interviews, demonstrating the depth of research that went into the article.
3. All eyes on the large font
As silly as it might sound, looking at large, centered text and scrolling for a while felt better than seeing a bunch of small text that fits all on one screen. Similar to the infinite scrolling on Tumblr, the article seems to go on and on, but my curiosity in what images would pop up next created an anticipation to keep reading
Check out the story for yourself!
