I’m a fan of long-form journalism. I commission, edit and publish it at The Fence magazine. I even enjoy reading it – most of the time. But there is a tendency, sometimes, for such pieces to be ornate, obtuse, and often, quite frankly, too long. I wanted to find out what other editors and writers at other more influential publications felt, and how they divine the future for long-form journalism in the British mediascape, and whether there are too many furtive glances Stateside, where the format is a jewel in the country’s literary culture.

The Financial Times and The Guardian are the two newspapers with flagship long-read platforms, and, interestingly, there are two American editors near the helm: Jonathan Shainin, a former editor at the New Yorker, moved to London in 2014 to set up the game-changing Guardian Long Read, and is now the paper’s head of special projects. Matt Vella, formerly of Time magazine, became editor of the FT Magazine two years ago.

Both of them underline the significant differences between the American and British markets. In the UK, there are spiky broadsheets competing fiercely for the same readership in a small island, whereas in the vast continent of America, establishment newspapers represent each city, with the Los Angeles Times infrequently crossing swords or subjects with the Boston Globe (in the pre-digital era). The idea of feature writing, Shainin insists, is a different tradition in the States, and is defined not by length, but by the way articles are commissioned and reported.