Must I know how long it will take to read an online news story? Apparently, yes. What next? Restaurants? Coq au vin: twenty minute eat. Three minutes. Walk once around a tennis court. Rinse the afternoon tea cups. Decide whether to get a dog or a cat. Read-time tags are useful in one way, like tram trackers. God knows how anyone ever caught a bus before the internet. Actually, no. The latter are far more useful. It could be raining. — It helps the readers, says the editor. You can’t see the length of online stories like you can in physical newspapers . — I thought all newspapers were physical, replies the writer. Like physical cash, or physical shops. Why is everything real called ‘physical’ now? And you should be able to roughly judge the length of a story by its headline. — How? says the editor. — Moreover, some newspapers have always split stories across pages. I’ve never seen a printed front page messed up with ‘15 minute read’ . —(Pause) Did you jus...
Recipes and ruminations from a small house in a big city.