[Sample] The Essay Is Back, and It Is Angry

The conventional wisdom about attention spans — that the internet has destroyed them, that nobody reads more than 300 words, that every piece needs a listicle format to survive — is contradicted by the data from every major publishing platform.

Substack's fastest-growing writers are not producing quick takes. They are writing 3,000-word essays on subjects they have been thinking about for months. The Atlantic's longest pieces consistently outperform its shorter ones on time-on-page metrics.

What readers appear to want is not brevity but trust. They want a writer who has genuinely engaged with a subject and is willing to take a position — not a content unit optimised for search and social sharing.