I heart The New York Times, but not with 2500 words.

I love The New York Times. I've read it every morning for years. Lately, however, I'm not sure if the articles have grown into unreadable chunks of texts that no one has time to consume, or.... if it's just me. 


I've been noticing for weeks now that I'm only reading about 1/3 of any article longer than a page. If I have to click on a second or third page to understand the gist of the article, I'm off on to another page. I simply do not have 15 minutes to read something that goes on page after page. When a publication cannot hold my attention on a subject as near and dear to my heart as Italy, they need to cut the content down. I am an avid reader and writer, but if you can't wrap in up in 15 minutes or less, I'll find someone who can, OR, I will simply lose interest in the topic altogether (trust me, my life will go on). 


Most of the sites that I write for have a word count limit of 400 to 500 words per article. Studies show that's about the average attention span of the Internet reader. That's about the most I have time to read, Internet or print and even then, I'm skimming. 


We have so much information coming at us from all angles that no wonder the United States leads the world in the number of cases of attention deficit disorder (I always thought it was the sugar). I read more than I did 5 or even 10 years ago, but I'm also tossing more reading material into my own "slush pile." I used to feel bad. I used to make a second effort to try to like or at least have time for every piece I was initially interested in reading. I know how hard writers work to get published. There's blood on those pages! But as time went, it became a battle between their blood and my time to write in my own. Yeah, I won.