Write More Listicles

As journalists, we need to write for our readers.

By this, I don’t mean that you should pander. Good reporting should challenge its readers. We are in the business of reporting things exciting, interesting, dangerous and rare. If your readers always agree with those stories, then you’re doing something wrong. (It should also challenge the reporter. If you always agree with your own story, only find what you expected going in, or can’t get any emotional distance from your work, then you’re doing things even more wrong.)

No, I’m talking about how we tell our stories, and specifically the formats that our industry tends to look down on.

As a profession, we journalists have generally formed a consensus on what constitutes Good, Better and Best types of work. This has led to rules such as:

• Longer is smarter;
• Serious journalists report serious subjects;
• Paper beats pixels.

If there is one thing we can certainly agree on above all else, it is that listicles constitute the lowest form of journalism. You will find listicles on video game sites and cat reviews, not a serious paper of record.

Here’s the thing though: Our readers don’t agree. In fact, there is an almost inverse relationship between the kind of work that advances your career and the work that reaches more people.

Take, for example, outlets. It is axiomatic that getting published in a magazine like the New Yorker (a glossy, hard-copy magazine) is better publishing a story on a site like MSN.com (online only, super high-volume). Certainly it is more difficult to publish in the New Yorker than a site like MSN. You will generally have more resources and the opportunity to produce work of far greater depth at a magazine than a daily website to boot.

You will also reach an audience about five hundred times smaller. Not a typo.

The New Yorker claims a circulation of about 1.2 million, much of it decorative. MSN.com, on the other hand, reaches about 500 million people. I have seen some of my own articles alone draw more than 12 million readers through their site. That’s nearly a fifth of the entire readership claimed by the Washington Post itself. For sheer communication, you can’t beat that kind of reach.

My point is that, often the overlooked sections of our industry have some of the greatest potential in terms of actually telling stories to people. Which brings me to the listicle, and the top five reasons why you should be writing many more of them.

#1 – Unread stories do nobody any good

This is probably the most important reason of all. Unread reporting helps no one.

Our job is to inform the public. The more people who read our stories, the better we can do that job. People tend to read listicles, and specifically tend to read them all the way to the end. That’s a claim that you can’t make about many magazine-length pieces, on or offline. The more people who read your stories, the better you will be at informing the public.

And people read listicles. Editors that run listicles grab at them because they drive huge amounts of traffic. In my own work, I have seen listicle pieces rocket to the most widely-read pieces that I write. They dominate the most popular articles on websites that run them.

Readers like listicles.

#2 – It isn’t either/or

Say you have a major story, and the opportunity to choose whether you will write it as a magazine-length piece full of depth or a top-five listicle that only hits the headline points. How should you write the piece?

The answer: It depends.

This post isn’t a jeremiad for why listicles should kill the feature piece. Sometimes (often times!) a story is best served with real depth, even if that means it will draw fewer readers. With other stories, it’s fine to draw the most attention possible to the big picture. This is up to you. It depends on the needs of this story and what you want it to accomplish.

It isn’t an either/or. Sometimes a traditional article will tell your story best. Other times a listicle can achieve the best combination of facts and outreach. Use your judgment when deciding which is the right move for any given piece.

#3 –Listicles actually can be a very useful format

This isn’t just about readership. Listicles actually are an extremely useful format for some types of storytelling.

In particular, this format can help you write information-dense pieces or cover ]highly technical subjects. Writing the narrative for articles like that can be difficult because of the amount of background a reader needs before they can even get into your story itself. A listicle lets you break that up, giving the readers their background and then their story in discrete segments that don’t need to have a unified narrative flow.

Once again, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes a very difficult subject needs a unified narrative. In those cases, breaking the story up into subsections can disrupt more than help. But if you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to merge several key points into one flow, maybe the answer is that you just don’t have to.

#4 – Listicles are well-formatted for online reading

People read differently on screens vs. on paper.

It seems counterintuitive to many people. After all, words are words. Who cares whether those 1,200 words are printed on dead trees or conveniently displayed on a phone/tablet/laptop?

You do, even if you don’t realize it. On paper we tend to read more slowly and at more length. On screens we tend to skim and move on more quickly. Readers are far more likely to finish a hardcopy article than a digital one, will generally consume far more digital articles than hardcopy ones, and far less likely to retain the details of a piece they read online. (This is, incidentally, why the promised e-book revolution has not yet killed the paperback. Most people who intend to read at length prefer hard copy.)

There are many reasons for this, but listicles are particularly well suited to the way that people read online. They are shorter, use visually distinct sections, and communicate their most important points in easily-skimmed headlines.

#5 – They make your job easier too

This is the seedy underbelly of the listicle, and honestly a huge part of why they’re looked down on by most journalists. They are much easier to write than a single narrative.

When you write a listicle, you’re really writing a handful of quick observations, data points or mini-stories. The piece might contain substantively all the same information that you would include in a standard article, but without any of the difficult transitions from one thought to the next. You don’t have to connect each different idea. Instead you just present (or “list”) them one after the other.

As a result, these stories take less time and effort to write.

This is a double-edged sword. “Easier” can quickly become “lazier,” unless you carefully watch your own work. This leads to shoddier writing, sloppy reporting and a whole parade of horribles. This happens often and those bad habits contribute to the listicle’s bad reputation.

Don’t entirely knock it though. We live in an age of tighter deadlines, increased demands and a newsroom culture that generally needs us to do ever-more with ever-less. Don’t write off a format that can make your job easier just because it might lead to bad habits. (Pun intended…) Instead, watch yourself carefully for those bad habits. Don’t let them develop.

The listicle can be a very useful way of writing articles that your readers want and can relate to. Just make sure that you keep writing the best possible pieces, regardless of the format.