BuzzFeed executive editor Doree Shafrir and I started talking about hiring a “longform” editor in the spring of 2012, at the urging of our most experienced writer, Michael Hastings. Michael had just filed a 3,800-word profile of the writer Jose Antonio Vargas, and I gave it the sort of edit that I had learned in a decade of political reporting: I sharpened the top; took out a couple of really egregious barbs; made a tweak here and there, and put it on the page.
Michael was appalled. Half of the things he’d written, he explained to me, didn’t belong in the story — he’d put one passage in so the editor would cut it, rather than a more cherished section; others were tentative and preliminary and he wasn’t sure where they were supposed to fit. The story, as he’d filed it, was the beginning of a conversation with his editor, not something that he expected to see on the internet.
Michael was appalled. Half of the things he’d written, he explained to me, didn’t belong in the story — he’d put one passage in so the editor would cut it, rather than a more cherished section; others were tentative and preliminary and he wasn’t sure where they were supposed to fit. The story, as he’d filed it, was the beginning of a conversation with his editor, not something that he expected to see on the internet.
