For most Indian readers, the news arrives on a five-inch screen held in one hand on a moving bus. Long-form journalism will always matter, but the front door to the news for a rising generation is vertical, tap-through, and finished in under a minute.
Google's Web Stories carousel now sits above the fold on Discover for millions of users. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have trained thumbs to swipe up on anything.
A newsroom that ignores this format is choosing to be invisible. At Sunday Show we treat Web Stories as first-class citizens: every published article is auto-published as a tap-through story, and we hand-craft a trending six-slide edition every day.
Editors write the story headline first, the article headline second — because the story is what most readers will actually see. The worry with the format is that it flattens context.
That is a real risk, and the answer is not to skip the format, but to link back cleanly. Every slide in our stories carries an attachment that takes the curious reader to the full article — reporting depth is one tap away.