A recent article in Business Week profiles a brewer in California who sold his business to Anheuser Busch and is now working as part of the giant beer maker's organisation. The story is short- no more than 500 words and weaves an interesting tale of a man who put caution to the winds, followed his dreams, and came out a winner. At first glance it's a well written article- a great inspirational story, told succinctly, with a happy ending. But when I think of pieces such as this one I wonder how appropriate it is to sum up a life of twenty years in five hundred words. Surely you are missing out on details that are critical to the truth of the situation.
There are only a couple of sentences in there which talk about the pressure that the business and his choice of work put on his spouse. They touch ever so briefly on topics such as the emptiness of a childless marriage and the self doubt which hounded him when things were failing. But then those are just a couple of sentences. The bulk of the article is heavily skewed towards romanticizing the notion of taking up something on a whim.
Perhaps this is a result of the environment we live in today. People have short attention spans and they want from journalism what they want from tweets and Facebook posts- quick snippets of information that can be easily digested and do not require too much engagement. Who wants a well rounded two page treatise at the end of which you can make your own call, when five hundred words read in five minutes can give you a ready made answer? Who wants details anymore?
There are only a couple of sentences in there which talk about the pressure that the business and his choice of work put on his spouse. They touch ever so briefly on topics such as the emptiness of a childless marriage and the self doubt which hounded him when things were failing. But then those are just a couple of sentences. The bulk of the article is heavily skewed towards romanticizing the notion of taking up something on a whim.
Perhaps this is a result of the environment we live in today. People have short attention spans and they want from journalism what they want from tweets and Facebook posts- quick snippets of information that can be easily digested and do not require too much engagement. Who wants a well rounded two page treatise at the end of which you can make your own call, when five hundred words read in five minutes can give you a ready made answer? Who wants details anymore?
