Every so often when we have guest posters here at Techdirt, they ask „what word count are you looking for“ and I always provide the same answer: as long as it takes to tell the story you‘re telling — no more, no less. This is the internet, and sometimes stories can be quite short and get the point across, and other times they can be quite long. There may be times that we‘re concerned where a story goes on too long, but that‘s mainly because it may lead to the key points disappearing in a sea of other stuff. In those cases, we may look for ways to shorten the post, or possibly split it into a multi-part series. But in an age where we don‘t need to fit things into a limited number of column inches, it seems appropriate to argue that any story should be as long as it needs to be.

The Associated Press, it appears, has other ideas. It has sent out a memo to folks that most of its stories need to be shorter: