Mr. Carlson, the chief correspondent for Business Insider, a website that covers technology and finance, doesn’t waste words lingering over details or musing on bigger themes — leadership, technology, the nature of innovation. He favors the short paragraph and the brief biographical sketch. "She was a pompom girl and a debater," he writes in his précis of Ms. Mayer's childhood. “She was on the precision dance team.” The result, to borrow the digital media cliché, is corporate history as snackable content.

In an interview last year, Impoco said he would avoid "snackable" news snippets and look-back-at-the-week analysis found in other news weeklies. Instead, he wanted to create originally reported long-form features that aren't found in other publications.

Long-form writing has taken a beating in social media over the last five years. In addition to Twitter's letter-limit, Facebook hides longer status updates (requiring users to click for more) and advertisers have deliberately targeted dollars at so-called "snackable media" — the kind of content short enough to be satisfying on a cell phone.

Snacking is a word often used when describing mobile TV viewing habits, and "snackable" shows are considered by many in the industry to be the way ahead.