Hi guys!

Those of you that know me offline will know that besides my photography, I’ve been working on ‘a project’. Well, I’ve finally got something cobbled together that I’m prepared to let see the light of day.

What is it? Glad you asked. It’s Deep Reads. An easy way to find something interesting to read.

We believe in two simple truths. One, the world we live in is an endlessly interesting place. Two, that everything old is new again.

When we come across an interesting news item we’ll post about it and recommend a related piece of #longform journalism that we think you’ll enjoy. It’s that simple.

As the platform is built out we’ll be launching tools to help you cut through the clutter, to quickly and simply aggregate and curate the longform content most relevant to you. In the meantime, care for a recommendation?

Right, that’s cool, Tom. But what in the hell is longform journalism?

Think magazine cover stories. The Sunday paper. Profiles. Basically anything that takes longer than 5 minutes to read but is much shorter than a book. Sports, politics, science, celebrity. You name it, someone’s written a shed-load about it.

Your local paper? The big newspapers? Each pumps out an incredible volume of stories everyday that answer the ‘what’. What happened. Published less frequently, but with a greater shelf-life, longform stories go into the how and why. Tiger Woods won his first golf tournament in over two years last weekend. The first since his epic infidelity came to light. Everyone knows that Tiger Woods cheated on his supermodel wife. That’s the what. In a 1996 Sports Illustrated profile they asked, ”Will the pressures of celebrity grind him down first?” That’s the how and why - http://deepreads.co/2011/12/05/tiger-woods/.

Or maybe you read on Bloomberg about the Stage II clinical trials testing the therapeutic benefits of magic mushrooms for post-traumatic stress disorder? http://deepreads.co/2011/12/06/magic-mushrooms/.

What with the proliferation of ipads, e-readers, iphones and free wifi, it’s simple to get web content anywhere. This ease of access has fostered something of a longform renaissance. Think of this as the antithesis to the endless barrage of tweets, status updates and rehashed news. This is quality over quantity. This is sit back, pour a glass of wine kind of reading.

Call this a pre-alpha, not even close to a beta iteration. In the coming weeks and months I’ll be building out the platform and technology so that you can tailor the reading experience to deliver only those longform pieces (and eventually books) that are relevant to your interests. I’ve got a hell of a long way to go with this, but I wanted to share with you what I’ve been up to so far.

I hope you enjoy the site. For sure, it’s not for everyone. If you like the idea, or know someone that might, I’d appreciate it if you’d share this post with them. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on it. tom (at) tomolesnevich (dot) com.

Happy Holidays!

Tom Olesnevich