2011 Pulitzer prize winners in easy-to-read format

April 19, 2011 8:37 PM

Longform.org has the 2011 Pulitzer prize winners in unadorned plain text. Instructions below for using Longform with Instapaper.

Here's what you have to do:

1) set up an account at Instapaper.

2) Go to Longform Pulitzer Prize Winners and click on the button below the articles you want to read that says "read later."

3) Now when you return to instapaper there will be a nice collection of ad-free, readable articles.

You can also install the bookmarklet or smartphone app (which costs money). The bookmarklet lets you save most articles in a readable format.

More on Longform here.

posted by mecran01 (15 comments total)

Awesome.

BTW, that "bookmarklet" link also includes instructions for linking your Instapaper account to your Kindle, and I have to say that this makes Instapaper one of my favorite Kindle resources ever.
posted by mattbucher at 8:53 PM on April 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I hope the multiple steps involved don't turn people away from a really useful service. I have no commercial or personal connection with either site, I'm just a jazzed user. I even sprang for the Ipad app.
posted by mecran01 at 8:56 PM on April 19, 2011

Do they have birth certificates available too?
posted by indubitable at 8:57 PM on April 19, 2011

Instapapered
posted by unliteral at 9:05 PM on April 19, 2011

Hang on… am I the only person on here that says that?
posted by unliteral at 9:06 PM on April 19, 2011

longform.org is one of those websites that enriches the worth of the internet
posted by aesacus at 9:07 PM on April 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

After suffering through using the inferior unofficial Instapaper apps that are available for Android to save longform.org articles, I just realized that there's a link on the left side of the page that switches the buttons to Read It Later (for which the official Android app is pretty good).
posted by jessssse at 9:08 PM on April 19, 2011

I even sprang for the Ipad app.
So did I, back in June 2010 when it was free. I'd happily pay for it if I had to now though.
posted by unliteral at 9:24 PM on April 19, 2011

My favorite kind of text.
posted by chemoboy at 9:45 PM on April 19, 2011

Or, you could read the articles on each publication's site, and thus not deprive them of the ad revenue that helps, in a small way, underwrite such awesome journalism.

Just saying.
posted by Scoop at 9:56 PM on April 19, 2011

This a smartphone post? I don't really get it. I can bookmark and read later pretty well on my own.
posted by BeerFilter at 10:36 PM on April 19, 2011

Or, you could read the articles on each publication's site, and thus not deprive them of the ad revenue that helps, in a small way, underwrite such awesome journalism.

Just saying.

In all fairness, these are articles between 4 and 16 months old. While I agree that 'credit where credit is due' is a crucial element to properly bring journalism into the Internet age, these papers long ago cashed in on what they expected to get from these articles.

Additionally, "seeing ads to push money the host's way" is generally a pretty bad mindset to get into, IMHO. It causes all kinds of ripple effects with their CPM, conversion rate, expected visit length, etc., since the visitor coming from a pulitzer-winner agglomeration site for a year-old piece has a very different visit signature than, say, the one coming from google news for the last couple days' stuff, which is what they've been optimizing their ad campaign for over the last 3 weeks. Their analytics will easily pick up on the difference, but the advertiser's metrics may well not, and then they might have to renegotiate ads at a lower CPM for the next few months, all because the Pulitzers caused a lot of well-intentioned but low-ad-click traffic - traffic which also costs money, but i'm ignoring that for the sake of argument.

There are of course counterpoints - a good ad salesman would point to the quality of reporting (3 pulitzers last year! Our staff are the best of the best! Think of the credibility by proxy!) - but I'm mostly pointing out that it isn't so black and white as all that.

Sorry for the derail. Good post, instapaper'd bunches! Thanks.
posted by pahalial at 11:50 PM on April 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

Man, longform.org is brilliant.

And thank you, pahalial, for expressing something I've always thought but haven't been able to describe, not knowing about CPM and analytics and all that stuff.

I've always been kind of wary of appeals to visit a site "so they get ad revenue" - if the only reason I'm visiting the site is to give them some ad impressions, then I'm not really the target for the ads, am I? Advertisers are paying them, but the advertisers are getting ripped off, because presumably me visiting the site but never looking at, let alone clicking the ads * 10,000 other visitors like me doing the same thing means they won't be getting the sales they hoped for from their ads, and will take their business elsewhere.
posted by Jimbob at 5:13 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Longform + instapaper + epub reader = a big win.

I love downloading lots of articles to my nook, opening the file, and seeing, like, 800 pages of excellent articles waiting for me.
posted by Lucinda at 6:51 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Read It Later links aren't working for me.
posted by LogicalDash at 4:46 PM on April 20, 2011