Why The Input Club's attempt to control longform isn't going to work
I got angry yesterday. This isn't a regular occurrence for me in general, but it's particularly unusual when it comes to sports media; there's plenty of frustration and disappointment in that world, and in discussing it, but there isn't too much that motivates me to outright anger. Yet, Esquire and ESPN The Magazine writer Chris Jones' " In Defence Of Longform " (which really reads like a defence of a specific kind of longform that he practices, a condemnation of all other attempts at the form, and an exclusion of those who aren't already practicing his kind of longform, but we'll get to that) and the subsequent Twitter arguments I had about it ticked me off in a way I hadn't experienced in years. I've been trying to figure out what exactly sparked that anger (after all, surely there are more controversial and more problematic things out there than an argument over longform standards), and I think I now know just why it bothered me so...