The Chained Reader

Something strange happened the first time I encountered an article online that I wrote for a print magazine. The article was an old-fashioned feature that had taken me months to report, then perhaps six weeks to write, plus another six to eight weeks to edit and rewrite with the help of capable editors, copy editors and fact-checkers who helped give the magazine prose of yesteryear its distinctive glossy finish. The layered process by which such texts were produced meant that I had read through my article with close attention over a dozen times before it was published, by which point I could recite long passages of my prose by heart.