A long time past?

An article about an apparently endangered artifact -- the long-form magazine story -- is published today in The Tyee online magazine. It is the article that originally won Leigh Doyle her National Magazine Award for Best Student Writer.

Long-form magazine articles have become scarce in Canadian magazines. Eight thousand words used to be a common length for a feature. Ten thousand words or more was once considered long; now anything over 5,000 is a rare find. All the players -- publishers, editors, writers and readers -- say they want longer articles, but, hampered by financial limitations and a lack of ambition, long form is shrinking away. The few titles struggling to produce long form are either ground down by limited financial means or hoping the federal government will rescue them by changing the charitable donation status of magazines.

(Fair disclosure: I'm quoted in the article.)