My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University points out that there actually is a positive trend occurring in the profession.

Here is an excerpt.

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Myth: The current mode of sports journalism is limited to 140-character snarky sound bites. It’s all fast food consumed by people with shockingly short attention spans.

Reality: The long-form genre in sports journalism not only is thriving, it is reaching new levels on multiple platforms. Surprisingly (shockingly?), there is a growing market for long in-depth pieces with strong prose and reporting.

“It’s really exploding,” said Glenn Stout. “The hunger is there. There is a tremendous appetite for long-form stories.”

Stout speaks from his perspective as a content editor for SB Nation Longform. Since launching a year ago, the site has produced 99 stories, ranging from roller derby to ultimate frisbee wars.

SB Nation Longform hardly is alone. Sites likes Grantland and Sports on Earth have sprouted as outlets for long-form storytelling. ESPN.com has featured several terrific in-depth pieces from Wright Thompson and others. John Branch of the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a story on skiers caught in an avalanche.

Stout is elated about the revival of long-form sports journalism. As the long-time editor of the annual book, “The Best American Sportswriting” (the 2013 edition comes out in October), he has seen the waves in the industry during the last few years.

“If you look at the last five to 10 years, newspapers have gotten smaller. As a result, they are producing fewer takeouts,” Stout said. “The same with magazines. By the same token, the book industry also wasn’t producing the same amount of compelling non-fiction on sports. It left an open space (for long form stories) that wasn’t being filled.”

SB Nation sought to fill the vacuum. It reached out to Stout during the summer of 2012. He was told the site wanted a vehicle to differentiate itself in the crowded sports market.

“SB Nation was very well established in the blog field,” Stout said. “However, they weren’t known as a destination for good writing. They saw long-form as a way to highlight writing on the site.”

Thus far, SB Nation has had pieces written by authors like Pat Jordan, Peter Richmond, Jeff Pearlman, Michael Mooney, Elizabeth Kaye, Alex Belth and many others. Stout says some stories are assigned, but for some writers, they essentially get a blank canvas.

Stout tells writers, “What’s the one story that you always wanted to do, but nobody allowed you to do it.”

That approach produced a piece from Michael Graff about Earl Badu, the former Maryland player who committed suicide 10 years after hitting one of the biggest shots in the program’s history.

“That story exploded for us,” Stout said.

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Here’s the link for the rest of my column.