Circulation numbers for print publications are generally down, and the monthly audiences at websites such as the gossip blog Gawker are broadly up. But don't write the obituary for long-attention-span journalism quite yet. Go to instapaper.com and download the plug-in for your Web browser. Then install the accompanying Instapaper application to your iPhone, iPad, Kindle, or (soon) Android device. The next time the boss steps away and your midafternoon Web excavation unearths a well researched, brilliantly written article—such as the feature stories in this magazine, if we may be so bold—click "read later" in the browser toolbar. The service acts like a TiVo (TIVO) for words. It will save the story to your e-reader or your tablet so it can be read later. Marco Arment charges $5 for a premium version of the app that lets users store up to 250 articles and share them with other users.
Instapaper, which has more than a million users and is growing rapidly, has competition. The biggest is Read It Later, with more than 3 million users. Longreads, a site that shares recommendations for in-depth articles, has a lively Twitter feed with more than 15,000 followers.
Nate Weiner, the 26-year-old Web designer in San Francisco who created Read It Later, thinks these services hold promise for old-school journalism. Most of his users read saved stories between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. If they're on mobile devices, reading time spikes during the commuting hours and again from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
There may be one snag for traditional publishers. Services such as Instapaper and Read It Later let users view their saved stories in an uncluttered format stripped of the ads and other marginalia of the Web browser. That could cost media companies some advertising revenue.
Read more at Business Week
