My thoughts on slow journalism

December 13, 2025

What is slow journalism
How long to wait for a request for comment?
All the information into one story
Would the stories be better?
Gain readers?
Allows everyone to be more human?
Additional links

I know I’m tired of reading articles that include with “company did not immediately respond to a request for comment”, keep being updated with new information, or I find the worst to be new articles coming out with more information. If these companies engaged with slow journalism, not only would all of this hopefully stop, i…

December 13, 2025

What is slow journalism
How long to wait for a request for comment?
All the information into one story
Would the stories be better?
Gain readers?
Allows everyone to be more human?
Additional links

What is slow journalism

Remember when teachers would tell you to take your time and show your work. Well, at least they told me to take longer to do something. Why can’t that apply to journalists and articles today? Because everyone wants information now, but if every site is doing that how do they stand out besides being independent and have journalists that people want to read?

This isn’t about delaying publishing just because, it’s about getting all the facts, hearing from everybody you’ve contacted, answering why this matters and not writing a story just because.

It also allows everyone who works on the story to be human, for example there was a time when I was working on this and I had a cold. Because I was practising slow journalism, I was able to take it easier and work less on this until I was feeling back to normal.

With many stories contacting a company or at least someone else for comment, how long should someone writing a story give for a response? In normal journalism, if they don’t respond quickly then the article says something like “company did not immediately respond to a request for comment”, what does it look like if slow journalism is being observed?

It’s keeping in mind that everyone is busy, nobody is awake 24/7/365, and you are most likely not the only person contacting the company for a comment. Personally, I believe there are some ways to get your questions answered, such as ensuring you are contacting the right person or email address, keeping the email short and to the point, not being mean to them in the email, are just some examples to ways to hopefully get a better response.

There have been instances of stories having to be retracted because not enough time was given to respond to a request, and I personally have experienced one response within an hour, and another where another company never responded. I believe you should be honest with your readers and tell them how long you waited before publishing.

All the information into one story

Often with breaking news, all the information doesn’t come out at one time. Yes, the big story often comes out first, then over time more information comes out. With normal journalism, you would write a new story about each bit of information, or have to update existing ones in a way that hopefully readers will read. Moving to slow journalism would provide the opportunity to gather all the information together, put it in one story that helps everyone to understand the entire story.

One example that comes to mind if there’s an election happening. Stories can be written, published or even updated based on any bit of information, such as a political party releasing a statement. It can result in lots of people needing to be employed during that time, and the number of stories worked on can vary based on multiple different things. If you want an idea of what it’s like being a journalist on an election night, then VOA and CNN both have good articles on it.

Would the stories be better?

Spending more time on a story or not publishing it until many days later doesn’t always equal a great story. However, I believe there are a few things that can be done to make a story better, which in turn will either show or help you not publish right away.

When was the last time you saw a spelling or grammar mistake in something published? It happens all the time, even with a help of an editor, mistakes still happen. By taking more time, you can catch those and ensure time isn’t spend running to the website to fix a mistake.

Granted, even I know that sometimes you can spend forever looking at the same thing and not catch mistakes. It’s happened to me multiple times on this website. If you think you see any mistakes, I, for one, would be very grateful if you let me know.

If you’re publishing quickly, then you may only repeat what’s in a press release or cover briefly what’s said. When slow journalism happens, those posts can be more detailed to ensure it’s not just repeated information or only the highlights, it’s the details, it’s the fact checking, covering the entire story, and much more.

Gain readers?

While I don’t believe that companies who work based on slow journalism will ever gain the same or more readers compared to other normal publications, it is gaining people who want to subscribe to that sort of thing.

I believe it’s not just about saying you take part in publishing less, but what else is unique or different about your publication? For example, do you have journalists around the world who will offer their viewpoint in a majority of the articles? Do all the articles have written, audio and video format so everyone can choose their preferred medium? Is the focus on the stories just on those who live in North America, or are they written and applicable for other countries?

Allows everyone to be more human?

Let’s face it, everyone is human, so changing how your company publishes does affect the people who work there. Not everyone likes change, but I believe this is a good change.

It allows those who write to not have to constantly pay attention to the news, and get stressed over writing stories that cover it.

Everyone has days when they can’t give 100% like they usually can, by practising this different form of journalism, it allows those who may have a bad day to give what they can.