Slow journalism not the solution to news fatigue: research

‘Slow journalism’ or the consumption of news at a slower, more in-depth pace has become more popular over the past decade or so according to an article from Journalism Practice, retrieved from the Nieman Lab. An entire subset of the population has moved away from traditional news due to a problem that has been plaguing the industry in this new age of information; news fatigue.

This idea of ‘slow journalism’ or ‘slow news’ is sometimes described as “unbreaking news”. The people who choose to read slow journalism do so not for the sake of keeping up with current events, but to add to their already existing knowledge base.

It was believed that those suffering from news fatigue would gravitate towards slow journalism, however new research now suggests the opposite. “People who like to consume news…like to consume news. There isn’t a necessary contradiction between scanning headlines on Twitter and sinking into a long New Yorker piece — between top-of-the-hour news headlines and a 10-hour documentary series. Niche formats like slow journalism are more likely to be add-on sources for people who already have an established news diet — rather than a life raft for people who’d otherwise be checked out” the article author, Joshua Benton explains.