[dredmorbius]

I have to say my own impression is similar.

I'm a fan of high-quality, significant, long-form, content.

I'm ... not really seeing that here. A few good pieces, but that's from their own self-admitted "best of".

If not necessarily an outright failure, then a mismatch of goals and attainment.

And as has been frequently noted on HN (occasionally by myself), length itself is not a marke of quality in writing. Requisite complexity is, that is, the structure of the piece itself should be suited and fitted to what it is it addresses. Longform wouldn't be the only place the false equivalence that "long" == "good" seems asserted. The New Yorker, which likewise has both a long legacy and recent history of producing good high-quality long pieces, also seems to fall far too frequently into the trap of mistaking length for quality.

I appreciate the effort and intent. I'm sorry to see the attempt failed. But execution was in fact lacking.

[ramphastidae]

How is this a failure? They are evolving with the times. Longform served their users with article recommendations for nearly 12 years, but times have changed. Services like Instapaper, Pocket, etc. are no longer popular, and so they’re focusing on podcasting — which is basically the future of longform journalism. Kudos to them.

[dredmorbius]

There are successful long-form text sites. Longform.org ... hasn't delivered.

Switching formats without improving content won't address the core problem.