Back in the spring, Jacqueline Marino wrote on Nieman Storyboard about her two-year analysis of the writing in the highest-rated multimedia presentations on Interactive Narratives, a Web site sponsored by the Online News Association.

At that point, the site had more than 1,700 presentations, of which “54 English-language presentations had received five stars, the highest rating.” Marino’s analysis:

Of those, 16 stories (30 percent) included no writing or minimal writing, such as a brief introduction to the site. Twenty-six (48 percent) featured long-form writing, the sort one might find on the front page of a newspaper or within the feature well of a magazine. Twelve (22 percent) included short-form writing. One presentation was inaccessible.

Given persistent edicts to “write short” for the Web, Marino was surprised that nearly half of the highly rated stories featured long-form writing.

Marino (whose rather long essay is worth reading) goes on to note: “… it’s important to remember that writing needs to evolve in order to survive. … In the scramble to develop new ways to tell stories, portraying meaning — as opposed to the mere collection and presentation of fact and opinion — remains important.

Marino’s essay brought to mind the recent excellent series by my local newspaper, Spokane’s Spokesman Review, which recently ran an eight-part series marking the 100th anniversary of the Big Burn, the largest forest fire in U.S. history. On the two days during the series when I was able to get the paper (it is not delivered in our area, so we can get it only when we drive 20 miles into town), I eagerly read every word of the series of long articles. I also checked out the series’ excellent multimedia presentations online.

Granted I was particularly interested in this story having read a book about it, but the existence side-by-side of the long-form story of the fire and the more concise multimedia presentations support Marino’s analysis that both can produce compelling storytelling.