Waaaaaay back on June 26, I wrote a post on what I called "hook journalism," about the future of multi-thousand word investigative writing in the digital age. The article I was riffing off of was a rather extraordinary piece in Fast Company by Richard Behar on China's dominance in Africa. Behar had spent a month reporting the piece in four sub-Saharan countries. I issued a plaintive wail about the future prospects of such spectactular works of journalism. To my great pleasure, that post attracted two very smart responses. I'd meant to respond to them both in the comments at the time, but somehow I lost track of them. So I'd like to pull them out now and offer some thoughts.

The first was from David Colarusso, on funding journalism that requires travel:

I remembered how valuable I found it when a good contingent of NPR's news staff was in China during the earthquake, serendipitous as it may have been. Being on location is invaluable. Then I wondered why a local couldn't have done the work. Of course, the answer is one of perspective, often an outside view is what's needed to bring clarity. However, the web's distributed intelligence may one day allow for such a piece to come about via careful coordination at a distance and for a reasonable cost.

Just after I finished up a master's program at B.U. in anthropology, I went down to Yale to study Kiswahili. And my professor there, a sassy Kenyan linguist, liked to give me a hard time. What could you possibly know about Kenya, he'd say, that I don't? My answer? Some, at least. First of all, I had usefully studied my research topic (namely, slavery on the Swahili Coast of East Africa) from a multicultural, academic perspective. He hadn't. Secondly, as a blank slate, I could let the story tell itself rather than imposing my own experiences. I still believe both to be true. Insert "journalist" for "anthropologist" and you have my thinking on why in some contexts non-local journos might still be the way to go.

The second was this from Carlo Scannella about the future of really, really long stories:

[W]hile I'm convinced there's no market for 38-screen stories on the web (I don't know about you, but if it's more than a couple pages long, I print it. Sorry, trees...), a technology like the Kindle points us to a future where we have the mobility of the wireless web with the physicality of paper-based books.

I like Carlo's point a lot. But the question I have here is about timing. Are we indulging in wishful thinking to believe the day will soon come when a critical mass of us are toting around dedicated book readers? Long-form journalism is collapsing quickly. Just about everyday there's a new story on the sorry state of the newspaper business. And our paperless future has been off in the distance for some time now. The worry is that if we our existing journalism models crumble, we're going to find it quite a challenge to build something up in their place. While a Kindle in every pocket is an appealing goal, right now they're $359 and still very much a niche product.

Both great contributions, and it thrills me to no end that David and Carlo came here to make them. (Photo thx nikkorsnapper. Photo is of dancers outside the National Theatre in Accra, Ghana, which was designed, financed, and built by China.)