Ten days or so ago, Felix had a screed against long, elaborate stories in the New York Times. He makes some good points, but I disagree with the conclusion he draws. For newspapers, writing short straight news is a recipe for decline into irrelevancy.

How is a newspaper supposed to compete these days? Unlike websites, newspapers are not searchable, and unlike TV, the news is 12 hours old by the time people consume it. How do you survive when you are a compelling read only for those sitting on the subway or toiletI hate to bring this up in polite company, but wifi plus laptop actually makes for great toilet reading.?

The New York Times a while ago decided to compete by becoming more like that other unquestionably compelling toilet read, The New Yorker, with long meandering articles that go in-depth in ways that Reuters and AP do not. I think this is a good idea, in principle; it would help if the subject matter were not breaking news, however. New Yorker articles aren’t built in a day, so it is no surprise that these NYT pieces are badly written, as Felix shows.

But there is another reason why longer articles often fail. Their writers often do betray a political point of view, yet would deny it if asked. This pretence — that they are practising objective journalism — undermines the emotional honesty of the writing. It makes for pieces that can’t quite come out and say what they mean, because the obvious, intended conclusions are left dangling. Seeming objective means pulling punches; we’re left with intimations and juxtapositions that are supposed to make us reach the right conclusion, but in fact all this divining of intent just makes for tedious reading.

The solution is obvious: Do what Raines would have hated. Take a page (ha) from the European press and advertise your leanings. Go ahead, become openly slanted, crusading, editorial, the way that European papers are. In Europe, the news is reported as part of a running commentary from a specific world view, and all with truth in advertising. Wouldn’t most of the conservative complainants shut up if the NYT simply outed itself as a liberal paper? Let me rephrase that — shouldn’t conservative pundits shut up if the NYT just declared, “Yes, we are aligned with liberal causes; our choice of news articles and their prominence will as of now reflect this. If you don’t like it, go make your own newspaper.”

The New York Post already practices a form of this, aligning itself with populist causes, taking the side of the man in the street, baring gut reactions in 240 point type on its frontFor example: “Wanted: Dead or Alive” next to Osama Bin Laden..

What of the Wall Street Journal? It is clearly thriving where the NYT is stagnant. I see two reasons:

positioning: Covering every news item from a financial perspective pays, because the target readerships knows the value of timely news, and ponies up for online subscriptions. Many people who read the WSJ read it online first. The paper becomes merely a record of the state of the newsroom’s reporting efforts at the end of the day. In line with this thinking, it has now included online subscribers in the circulation numbers.

design: The WSJ front page has long been designed like a news website, before such things even existed. Two columns of news headlines “link” (manually) to the full articles inside — it’s ideal for scanning. And then there is the New Yorker-esque piece, the A-hed, which is hewn for days if not weeks into a compelling, quirky read, teased with punny headlines. The subject matter is topical, but not breaking; unlike the NYT, the WSJ does not make the mistake of trying to rush this.

This segregation of stories gives you various ins into the paper, depending on your mood, and in that it is similar to The Economist, which can be attacked head-on via its opinionated leaders or slipped into via the more urbane back pages.

The Economist is in a sweet spot. It smudges the line between informing and opining in ways American media should emulateFoxNews is emphatically not an example of American media already doing this. It simply subjugates information to opinion. Stovepiping for the masses, if you will.. Reading the editorial pieces in the WSJ and NYT, caged as they are on that one page, I get a sense that they are more strident than they should be, having to abstain as they do from contributing to the rest of the paper.

So my free advice to the NYT: For your longer pieces, try to poach some of those editors at The New Yorker or Wall Street Journal. And then flaunt your colors.