Listicle (list + article)

A “listicle” (list + article) is an article with a list structure, as in “The Top Ten Barbecue Restaurants.” The term “listicle” has been cited in print since at least 2001 and was popularized on the Gawker  website.
 
Similar to the “listicle” is the “charticle” (chart + article).
   
 
Wikipedia: Listicle
In journalism and blogging, a listicle is a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient verbiage to be published as an article. A typical listicle will prominently feature a cardinal number in its title, such as “10 Ways to Warm Up Your Bedroom in Winter”, or “25 Hairstyles of the Last Hundred Years”, with subsequent subheadings within the text itself reflecting this schema. The word is a portmanteau derived from list and article.
 
Wiktionary: listicle
Etymology
Blend of list and article
Noun
listicle (plural listicles)
1.An article based around a list.
Usage notes
Such articles often feature a cardinal number in the title, as in “10 Best Movies of the Year” or “7 Ways to Spice up your Sex Life”.
       
Gawker
11/11/03 1:41pm
What’s Over: Everything, Perpetually
My estimable colleague at The Kicker, my own little Louella Parsons, has a complaint. “There are no good media scandals to report on right now,” she pouts, kicking into gear for a listicle: ...
 
Speak Up
PUBLISHED ON Oct.26.2005 BY m. kingsley
Dangling Listicles
That great bane of contemporary media, the Listicle, made another appearance last week. This time, it was in answer to that nagging question: what were the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years?
 
Google Books
The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English
By Grant Barrett
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional
2006
Pg. 216:
listicle n. a (newspaper, magazine, web site, etc.) article consisting primarily of a list. Media. United States. [list + article] This term is often used in a deprecating way, to describe an article or news story that required very little effort to produce.
2001 John Davin John Davin’s Web site (Pittsburgh, Pa.) (July 14) “My Comments and News” (Int.) Added Added an article to the listicle to the lists section.
2003 Elizabeth Spiers Gawker (NYC) (July 31) “The Daily Listicle: Corn, Castro & Che” (Int.) I’ve decided to default to one of the magazine world’s last great lame clichés—lists. Lists as articles. Listicles. (I feel dirty even saying it.) Consider this my homage to sappy service journalism.
   
Gothamist
First You Get The Money, Then You Get The Power, Then You Get The Influence?
By Garth Johnston in News on May 8, 2006 2:48 PM
(...)
As for the actual lists of people… You tell us. The editors over at New York seem to have designed this cover story so that it’s overwhelming size (24 different catagories of inluence!) and lack of detail (the hallmark of a good listicle is that no more than a paragraph shall be devoted to most subjects - assuring that almost no information is actually passed on to the reader!) make it a simultaneously slightly interesting and incredibly boring read. That might also have to do with the nature of reading these sorts of things online, we suspect it might be less of a snooze in print.
     
21 April 2009, New York (NY) Times, “Spring Sweeps,” Business, pg. 28:   
Real Simple takes the “listicle,” a list masquerading as an article, to a new level.
 
Media Bistro
The Art of the Listicle: Craft a Perfect ‘Top 10’
Editors and writers detail the commandments of creating a must-read list article
By Kristen Fischer - August 30, 2010
Everyone loves a good Top 10 list. We see them in magazines, scroll through them on blogs, and usually chuckle when David Letterman shares them on TV.
 
Listicles—articles with numbered subsections and content that collectively offers resources and tips for readers under the umbrella of one topic—provide a punchy way to assemble information in an easy-to-read article format. We asked writers and editors what makes a listicle work, and why audiences can’t get enough of them….
 
International Business Times
I Can Haz Journalism: The Listicle (And The GIF) As Storytelling Devices
By James DiGioia
on July 15 2013 4:19 PM
(...)
This is a form of story telling. I imagine a written piece on the subject would not have anywhere near the impact the listicle (or video) has. You can organize these lists into a story, the same way you can organize words. No one denies that a video can tell a story, so it seems like, in the Internet age, we shouldn’t be shying away from GIFs as a storytelling device.