Virginia Quarterly Review Scored Big With Mumbai Story

By Frederick Dreier

Virginia Quarterly Review tackles large stories, despite the fact that, with a circulation of roughly 7,000, the magazine is quite small. In November the publication ran a four-part web story looking back at the Mumbai terror bombings in 2008. The story, written by Jason Motlagh, is nearly 20,000 words long, and is titled Sixty Hours of Terror.

VQR did not include the story in a print edition.

Would you take the time to read 20,000 words on a computer screen? According to Ted Genoways, editor of the VQR, almost 750,000 people have read the story so far.

I am one of them. The story is a compelling read, and definitely the most in-depth piece of journalism I have seen about the bombings.

Yes, we live in an age of degenerating attention spans, where 200-word blog posts and 30-second video bursts are just about all the news we can handle. But this story kept me reading. It’s worth checking out.