Treasure or Torture?   

The long, ambitious series is a staple of contemporary American newspapering. Some represent public service journalism at its finest. But are too many of them ego-fueled tree-killers that turn off readers?

IT BEGINS WITH a vague sense of dread in the hour before dawn.

When the muffled "whump" from the front porch penetrates the fog of sleep with a bit more force than usual.

It grows at first light, the rolled bundle retrieved, a tactile awareness of uncommon heft en route to the kitchen table.

Until finally, coffee cup in hand, front page unfurled, the mists of denial depart.

FIRST OF EIGHT PARTS! 10-MONTH INVESTIGATION! FOUR INSIDE PAGES!

And you realize there is no escape. It is too late to put in a vacation stop. Whole forests of Georgia pine have been sacrificed on your behalf. The earnest do-gooders in control of the newsroom have decided once again...it is time to eat your spinach.

Time for another long newspaper series.

Perhaps no other event in contemporary newspapering more clearly defines the cross-purposes of producer and consumer.

On one side, the crusading journalists, investing vast resources in what they believe to be a noble enterprise, the close examination of evildoers and the recesses of the human heart. For them, the investigative series--complete with explainer graphics and boxes, creator bios and (a more recently adopted sacred obligation) concluding lecture on "What Can Be Done"--is the newspaper's single most essential function.

On the other, the beleaguered and dwindling band of newspaper readers. More committed than the average citizen to civic duty, but strapped for time, and uncertain how a multi-part explication of, say, deficiencies in the inspection of foreign-made toys will affect their daily lives. Wondering why they are paying $30 a month for what seems like a homework assignment.

Ron Mulder, president of the media consulting company MORI Research in Minneapolis, has simple advice for news managers contemplating the commitment to a huge investigation: "Just say no."

"In my view, the long series is well intentioned...but an abysmal failure," Mulder says. "People are just too busy. Newspapers are desperate to snare single-copy readers. But what happens when someone grabs the paper in the lunchroom and finds himself in the middle of a series is total confusion."

The problem with the long series, according to its critics, can be summarized in four overlapping areas:

They're too long. People don't buy newspapers because they couldn't make it to the bookstore. A good story should be told in one take so readers don't have to wait to find out what happens, or wonder how it all started.

They're too complicated. Newspaper readers aren't sitting around a conference table at a think tank. They know life is complex, but they want their newspaper to make it more comprehensible, not less so.

They demonstrate little sense of proportion. A newspaper series is an announcement that this is a really big deal. Readers, like most people, don't have enough room in their lives for too many really big deals. They'd like the solons of the newsroom to be more selective.

They're not about readers. They're about journalistic egos and big prizes. Forget all the self-righteous posturing about the First Amendment and watchdoggery; turn off the prize spigot and the long newspaper series would go the way of the manual typewriter.

But it is also true that a well-done series can do good; some have reformed corrupt institutions, freed innocent people from death row or put criminals in jail. Some don't change lives or laws, but are moving for what they tell us about humanity. And experts say there isn't much hard evidence that interminable, complicated and overwrought journalistic self-indulgence drives readers away.

Mulder says he's not aware of any research on the subject and has never been asked by a newspaper to prepare a study. Others say there are so many variables in day-to-day circulation that isolating the impact of a specific series would be difficult. And even Mulder concedes there might be some value in the "brand identity" a newspaper can create by developing a reputation for the exposé.

IN THE LAST YEAR, skepticism about the value of the long series has come from within as well. Last December, Washington Post Ombudsman Michael Getler, commenting on a trio of Post series that had run on 13 of the preceding 30 days, said: "My guess is that many readers said to themselves: 'Oh, my God. I don't have time for this.' "

Getler's tone was gentle and nonjudgmental. He accommodated Managing Editor Steve Coll's claim that big projects are "what we do, that no one else will, that matters."

Less gracious was Slate's Mickey Kaus, who provided his readers with more or less savage reviews of series from the Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, in a helpful new service on how to avoid them called "The Series-Skipper."

The SS version of the Post's eight-parter on the Florida election debacle comes in at about 1,500 words including headers ("Most Misleading Assertion," etc.), saves readers time (two hours) and pangs of conscience, without their missing "buried statistics or small backbiting remarks by presidential aides."

Earlier this year, for the L.A. Times four-part look at Hollywood, Kaus came up with an additional innovation, the Series-Skipper-Skipper. "Is it worth reading the following Series-Skipper summary of this series? No. Read something else. You won't miss much."

In July, the Series-Skipper tried to translate for the lay public the New York Times' book-length Sunday centerpiece and sidebars on Florida's overseas ballots ("There's a Scandal in Here Somewhere!"). Technically, the Times' stories weren't a series, since they ran on a single day. But it would have taken an exceptionally fit reader to finish it all in 24 hours without the SS.

Kaus, who has written his own long-form journalism for Harper's magazine and worked for Newsweek and The New Republic, says he used to think that series were "exciting things." Bob Woodward's massive looks at insider Washington in the Post "always had great stuff," he says. "Now we've got a lot of people duplicating the massive part without the great stuff. The basic overriding factor is that no one has any time. Even good series are a pain in the ass."

Kaus says reaction to his ridicule has ranged from "I'm so glad I don't have to read that" to "You should have seen it before it was edited."

Not that the newspaper series is without defenders.

Getler's column prompted an outpouring of letters from readers who support the Post's approach (several of those interviewed for this article suggested that the investigation culture in Washington may foster the most receptive audience in the country for the long series). Managing Editor Coll made the claim to Getler that investigations serve a business purpose as well, a demonstration of the newspaper's usefulness, without which "we put ourselves at risk."

The Post's Woodward--who appreciates Kaus' praise but says he shouldn't be blamed for inspiring a generation of newspaper investigators--also defends his paper's efforts in Florida. It was a major political event and deserved an exhaustive examination from the country's premier political newspaper, he says.

There is a danger, according to Woodward, that reporters who spend months on a project will feel that when "you find all these things out, you have to share them" and will produce work "more encyclopedic than revelatory." But while the election series didn't lead to a significant reinterpretation of events, it didn't fall into that category, he says.

At least, he's pretty sure it didn't. Woodward admits he didn't read it all ("I think I was out of town for at least one part of it.")

Roy Peter Clark, of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, has written long series for newspapers and tributes to the virtues of writing short. He says he won't take sides. "God knows there are bad and unreadable long series," Clark says. "But there are probably more bad and unreadable short stories.

"The problem in American journalism, if you look at a thousand newspapers, is not that there are too many enterprising and ambitious stories, but too few."

On balance, according to Clark, long stories tend to be better written because the people assigned to them "have proven themselves" and are more likely to be sophisticated reporters and writers.

Nevertheless, it's a not-very-well-kept secret in newsrooms around the country that the reporters and editors assigned to the big project may be the only journalists in sight who also read it. Everybody else "kind of fakes it," says Clark. "They make believe they've read it to show solidarity with a form that they believe in, even though they have the same practical constraints ordinary readers have."

IRONICALLY, CRITICS OF THE long series (though not Clark) often cite peer pressure, especially in the form of the Pulitzer Prize, as the root cause for the vast, unreadable pile of copy packaged with a bow for the prize committee. Slate's Kaus says encouraging the long series is "one of the ways the Pulitzer is destroying journalism."

Clark, who has served twice as a Pulitzer juror, believes some journalists labor under the misapprehension that to win big prizes it is necessary to write big. That's not true, he says, because the judges don't have time to read all that stuff either.

Nevertheless, it's hard to escape the notion that big is sometimes its own reward. The Pulitzer for Public Service from 1995 to 2000, for instance, went to newspapers that asked readers to devote time to the endeavor for an average of 8.7 days and read up to 49 stories in total.

Still, the Pulitzer Public Service winners, not surprisingly, also include some of the most compelling news writing in the world.

Gems like this, from a Washington Post report by Katherine Boo on the deplorable conditions in Washington, D.C., homes for the mentally disabled, homes owned by wealthy entrepreneurs where one of her key figures, Elroy, had been serially sexually abused and wantonly neglected: "Real estate records note that there are 11 bathrooms in the million-dollar Upper Marlboro 'Manor Farm' where the [foster-home owners live]. A city report recently noted that the home they provide for Elroy had no toilet paper."

Defenders of the newspaper investigation credibly suggest that this kind of work is essential for a free society to function. That the assimilation and synthesis of complex and disparate sources of information is a service that no one else can or will perform. They argue that sweeping, informed, authoritative journalism is virtually the only thing newspapers can offer that is available nowhere else.

It is plausible to argue, and it often is, that tangible social good results from a newspaper crusade. The Post's Pulitzer-winning series on foster homes prompted firings, congressional investigations and a massive overhaul of the system (which, one hopes, will prove more effective than the last a decade earlier, which moved the district's mentally disabled out of miserable government-run hospitals and into apparently execrable private foster homes).

Bringing public figures and public institutions to heel is perhaps the most familiar goal of the traditional, hard-hitting series. In its modern form, it runs from investigations of late-19th-century monopolists to massive media recounts of the presidential ballots in Florida. Crusading reporters put people in jail who shouldn't be on the street and win the release of prisoners who should be. The power of the press, even in an era when stories often see the light of day without going through one, is undeniable.

But these results are not strictly the province of a long series. Watergate, the country's most renowned investigative story, was not a long series but part of a continuing investigation that included, for the most part, relatively short stories.

The long series is also the one most likely to be singled out by critics of the form as tendentious and boring.

Jack Hart, managing editor/weekends for the Oregonian, says reader response to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning series about the travails of a disfigured 14-year-old boy was overwhelming. But he says he's also realistic about the perils of imposing on readers with ill-conceived or executed projects. If the subject matter isn't compelling, or the writers and editors don't understand the requirements of "real storytelling" and how to develop an "underlying deep structure," the results can be disastrous, he says.

"It's all in the execution. Length, in and of itself, is a pretty meaningless measure," Hart says. "You can screw up anything."

Still, Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder, apparently found it hard to concentrate on impact when he sat recently on the prize committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Writing for ASNE's magazine, The American Editor, in April, Hoyt says he read some terrific entries.

"But there wasn't a single story that couldn't have benefited from an editor's scalpel."

One, a 2,000-word report on the outcome of a murder trial, didn't reach the verdict until the 112th paragraph. Hoyt likened his experience to that of a motorist trapped at a railroad crossing, "waiting for a 200-car freight train to creep past."

As it happens, Poynter's Clark had also read the stories about the murder trial and verdict; they were published in the St. Petersburg Times. And he drew sharply different conclusions.

This was one of those instances in which the newspaper served a unique function, Clark says. The mundane details of the sensational case were well covered everywhere, he says. What the newspaper provided was perspective, context and a sense of where the events fit in the broader culture.

The Times' stories served to "transform the conversation [about the case] in the community," he says.

Tom French, a narrative projects reporter at the Times who worked on the trial story panned by Hoyt, says he believes there are a few key ingredients that go into a successful series: issues that readers care about; people that they recognize and to whom they can relate; and reward for readers' effort, i.e., telling them something they didn't know when they started.

"Our experience is that when we write something that requires depth and complexity...if we give them something long that needs to be long, readers don't mind," says French. "If they think it's a waste of time, they stop reading."

Clark also makes a case for the long serial, as opposed to the long series. A serially told story--with chapters that reach some sort of daily resolution--he says, can engage readers in a long, involved subject in relatively short takes. "The enforced waiting (for what comes next, and what happens in the end) is part of the effectiveness." The idea is to create an audience that looks for the story every day, just as some readers look for Doonesbury, he said.

In the end, Eric Newton, former managing editor of the Oakland Tribune and until recently historian at the Newseum, says he's not convinced there is much value in the conversation about long versus short journalism. The tension between advocates of sweeping investigations and lowest-common-denominator infotainment has been going on for more than a century. Today, newspapers need to worry about turning off readers, Newton says, simply because there are not enough of them.

But the blame can't be focused solely on long, boring stories, he says.

"Newspapers run a lot of short stories that are nothing but white space," says Newton, who is director of journalism initiatives at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. "Length isn't the most important question. We shouldn't run a single story that we can't understand.''