[padobson]

and time is not something that is afforded journalists and writers today.

This seems intuitive, and also provably false.

Joe Rogan is currently running the most famous and successful podcast in the world, and those conversations routinely go over three hours.

Dan Carlin is on a lower tier, but still highly successful, and his podcasts are far more polished and produced and integrate huge amounts of research, and the runtimes are even longer than Rogan's.

Maybe written content doesn't afford the detail you're looking for, which kind of makes sense, because you can listen to a podcast while commuting, exercising, showering or doing various chores, but you can't read doing almost any of them. But I'd argue almost anything done in an article can be done in a podcast or audiobook, so maybe the current failure of long-form journalism is not realizing that the medium has moved on.

[pitched]

When I want all the details, I look for a full book. When I want the summary, I check Wikipedia. Articles are somewhere between. Either something is too new or obscure/niche or not quite worth the time investment of a book.

So I think you’re right but it isn’t the medium that’s dead. More like, it takes up a weird spot on the ROI curve to read through that’s rarely worth the time.

[rchaud]

Journalists usually don't have the luxury of 3 hours with their interview subjects.

Since time is of the essence, they also don't go off on diatribes about California divorce laws, or posit personal theories about alien life forms, before getting to their question.