This autumn marks 10 years since we launched the Guardian long read. Looking back now, it is hard to remember how counterintuitive the idea seemed at the time – this was a moment when more and more people were wondering whether readers still had the appetite for anything longer than a few hundred words, or even 140 characters. Creating a dedicated space within the Guardian for multiple pieces of 5,000 (or more) words a week – many of which would take months, even years, to produce – seemed like a quixotic project. Thankfully, our readers felt otherwise, embracing our deeply researched stories about everything from the “cruel, paranoid, failing” Home Office and the battle against Islamic State to the strange world of competitive ploughing and the rise of hygge.
Just a few months after the long read launched, our audio team had the brilliant idea of launching the audio long read podcast. The idea was simple: get a great voice actor to read the articles aloud. That was it. It turned out that listeners loved it. (A few years ago, I briefly met Ed Miliband, who told me he liked to listen to the podcast when swimming lengths in the pool.)
