No. Long-form journalism is about keeping the reader engaged in a story they didn't know they wanted to hear. You wouldn't write fiction with a strict focus on the sequence of events, why should this be any different? While you're feeling patronized I find that I enjoy the engagement. Frankly, your way sounds boring.
I'm glad to know that at least someone enjoys this style, because I am with jablan; I hate it. To me, it suggests that the author doesn't expect me to find the content interesting, and that instead this content has to be packaged with (predictable) human-interest intrigue just to get me to read it.
To me, it's very analogous to trying to teach students math with colorful, picture-laden textbooks: it might be necessary for students who will never learn much math in order to just get them to pass the grade, but insofar as it works such students are not getting deep appreciation for the concepts.
But, this isn't math! It's a story, with characters and a plot. The intrigue is baked-in because it makes for an enjoyable read. Sure, the details are interesting, but there's nothing wrong with telling an interesting story with interesting details in an interesting way. "First this happened and then this happened and then this happened..." is not how you tell a story, regardless of whether or not the story happens to be factual.
I think the problem here is the motivation for reading. I enjoy reading fiction, love watching movies etc. But I clicked the link to the Wired article to learn something new. If I get entertained too, it's just a bonus, but it's entirely optional. Journalism even has a term for what I ask for, they call it "inverted pyramid"[1]. All the petty details intended to spice-up a story are welcome, but they should be placed appropriately, and should be easy to skim over. And this article is a perfect counter-example.
The concept of an inverted pyramid isn't quite what you're looking for here, is it? The inverted pyramid is the idea that a newspaper article leads with the most important facts first, followed by lesser and lesser details, so that one will always have read the most important facts for a given amount of reading no matter how long that amount of reading is.
But that's not really the problem with the Wired article. It's not in a newspaper, so it's legitimate to write it assuming the reader will read the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for the author to tell the story in chronological order (or whatever order is appropriate for communicating the important ideas).
Instead, I think the problem you and I have with it are the unnecessary artistic flourishes and the non-standard chronology designed to "pull" the reader into the article. Does anyone know what this aspect is called?
Edit: On second thought, maybe I'm just projecting. Do you really think that this article would have been better as a reverse pyramid?
If I want an artistic short story in magazine form, I'll read the New Yorker. But this is Wired, and the material facts of this story are the only interesting part.
I guess it's possible that a gifted author could wrap these fact with a human-interest element in a way that is worthwhile while still communicating an essential idea ("The Last Question" by Asimov comes to mind). But, by experience, this just isn't within the abilities of most magazine writers. And it doesn't need to be, because the material facts are plenty interesting on their own.
Edit: I can't reply to vacri, so I'll follow up to his comment here. Vacri: human interest pieces have been around for decades. Furthermore, the newspaper format of most journalism (one sentence paragraphs, most important facts at the top regardless of sensible narrative order, negligible artistic flourishes) were set a century ago. I'm pretty young (26), but I've read newspapers from before the internet and they did plenty of bad human-interest stories. I'm pretty skeptical that the internet had much of an impact in this respect. Maybe you have a more specific source, or I misunderstand your claim?
Edit 2, reply to fiatpandas: I think the distinction between an AP-style newspaper article and a human-interest short story is a false dichotomy. Instead, there is a middle option of a fact-focused piece designed to clearly communicate the essential ideas without relying on artistic/narrative devices to keep the reader's attention. (See my reply to jablan http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567) Wired can choose whatever style it wants, (and I certainly have no doubt they've done this plenty in the past) but my claim is that the human-interest style is almost always poorly executed. If the facts are interesting enough, then it's unnecessary, and if they aren't, then it's a waste.
You make it seem like these long-form narrative articles are a totally foreign concept to Wired, like this is a one-off piece that somehow slipped past the Wired editors who want brief pieces for the internet generation. Not true at all.
This article is nothing compared to a piece Neal Stephenson wrote about a trans-Atlantic fiber optic cable. It's hilariously long and pretty epic. I guess in your case I wouldn't recommend it, though.
I don't know, man. I'm all for AP-length news stories about current events (I don't want to read artistic prose about every little news event), but sometimes it's fun and interesting to transcend the typical format. I'm one year younger than you, by the way, just so you don't think this is a generational issue.
the material facts of this story are the only interesting part.
The facts are simple:
1. some guy made good counterfeit money
2. he got caught through a series of mistakes
a. sloppy waste disposal
b. over trusting
This is the same pattern as for most crimes. Seriously, minus the murder bit, it's a law and order episode. What I want to know, is not the predictable sequence of events, but who would do this, why would they do this, tell me the thought process that leads to these actions.
> This is the same pattern as for most crimes. Seriously, minus the murder bit, it's a law and order episode.
I guess that's why the original Law & Order is one of the few TV shows I like.
> What I want to know, is not the predictable sequence of events, but who would do this, why would they do this, tell me the thought process that leads to these actions.
I also want to know all this, so I think you may have misunderstood my position. (This applies to your other comment where you call me disingenuous for no good reason.) What I don't want is stuff like "Tourists milled about the platz in front of the cathedral, Germany’s most visited landmark, craning their necks to snap pictures of the impossibly intricate spires jutting toward the heavens.", nor do I want teaser paragraphs endings to keep me hooked on the article as if I would stop reading it without them.
Perhaps you have a perfect geographical understanding of the world, but I would have no idea what this alternative sentence would mean (which i constructed by my best understanding of what you claim to want):
A meeting was arranged in near the Cathedral in Cologne.
To me, that leaves a ton of questions:
How busy is this place? What are the odds a meeting would seem out of place? What is the tenor of the crowd? Who would be paying attention to a meeting and noticing?
Further, I would be curious, but not frustratingly so, about what the setting in general looked like. I'm a visual person, I like when an author helps me, visualize what I'm reading, it makes my comprehension easier.
I maintain that you are being disingenuous, because you are refusing to accept that others may find this stuff useful, because you don't and therefore suggest all things be done to your preference. Like I said, don't read something from a source known to do this. Find the AP feed instead, because some of us actually get better understanding from articles written like this.
I think we're both arguing with emotion here. You said you hated the style and it's rarely done well. I happen to think that Wired isn't a scholarly journal, and fact + emotional narrative can be really enjoyable to read if used appropriately (and I happened to enjoy reading the article). I guess I'm objecting to how you evaluated an entire genre of narrative style. There is irony in using your emotional response to a writing style to argue for a more objective or scientific approach to journalism.
