From today’s journalism.co.uk:

The past couple of years have seen a number of projects and publications launch offering long-form reads; in-depth articles that are perhaps 5,000 words or more in length.

The New York-based Atavist started last year; BBC Future, the new technology, science, environment and health-focused site from BBC.com, was unveiled six months ago; Aeon, a UK-based digital magazine of essays went live in September; and investigative science journalism publication Matter, which sells individual articles for $0.99, launched yesterday.

As new and experimental projects evolve, the pioneers in the long-form online space are writing a new set of rules.

Where a culture of short paragraphs and pull quotes has become the practice of online journalists, long-form is appearing to require a book-like layout offering a distraction-free read, editors are recycling and resurfacing old content – and at least one publisher of long-form online is refusing to write SEO-friendly headlines.

And where the rules are different, the results are too, with just 4 per cent of views coming from search engines in one case.

Read the rest of the article here.