Is deeply reported journalism going the way of the fax machine? Is the Web Apple says is our future, on tiny screens and mobile devices, all wrong for long-form, edited, fact-and-spell-checked work?
Maybe, but David Carr writing in the New York Times promotes The Atavist, which wants to present long-form content for the digital age. The Atavist has rich Web features but can also convert to clean text or even change to audio. So if you buy an article and begin to read it on a Nook you can then switch to an audio version for the drive to work and then finish it on a large monitor with all Web features enabled.
Writers are paid a fee to cover reporting expenses and then split revenue with The Atavist.
Certainly there's a place for it. After around 1,000 words on a Web article people seem to either lose interest or get eyestrain which results in lost interest. They say the cost was around $20,000 but they don't itemize time spent.
