• Lists

    Magazines That Will Publish Your List, Based On How Many Items Are In It

    By Nick Douglas, 11:59 PM on Tue Mar 4 2008, 3,253 views (Edit, to draft, Top, Slurp)

    "I'll never write a listicle," promised exiting Gawker editor Choire Sicha, naming the article form that symbolizes mediocrity (unless you are the Constitution). And while everyone in media except Sicha remains willing to pass off lists as articles, not all listicles are equal. Here are the industry standards for number of items in a listicle.

    1: New Yorker, Atlantic
    2: Reason
    3: Slate
    4. Economist
    5: Esquire
    6: Highlights
    7: McSweeney's
    10: Cracked.com; the online arm of every major magazine
    11: Cosmo Girl
    12: Cosmo
    15: Men's Health
    23: Real Simple
    25: Fortune
    60: Entertainment Weekly
    100: Radar, Rolling Stone
    300-700: Vogue
    701+: New England Journal Of Medicine

    As you can see, the cachet of a listicle vs. the number of items listed roughly follows an inverse normal curve, with an "uncanny valley" bottoming out in the teens.

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