The ‘slow cooking’ approach to news – a new print newspaper from someone most associated with period dramas such as Howard’s End – is gathering a following in the US.

Retro-looking and published only six times a year, County Highway promises it will never be available online.

Britain’s Observer newspaper quotes Donald Rosenfeld, a former president of Merchant Ivory, that the periodic newspaper aimed to be “something elevating”, its long-form articles being greeted with unexpected demand. “ “I think we’re bringing water to the desert.”

The “best writers” are being commissioned to write on “anything about which they feel passionate.

“It’s what the New Yorker used to be, or the old Atlantic, before they all became so of-the-moment topical. What it really was about was interesting writing – for example, the Pulitzer prize-winning master of nonfiction John McPhee writing about oranges.

“They’re stories that we wouldn’t read otherwise and that are beautifully crafted. They cross human interest.”

Subscriptions for the print-only broadsheet cost US$8.50 (A$13.36), and are accompanied by a pledge that the content will never be online. And they’re selling fast, with the first 25,000-copy edition sold out.

In a style inspired by a long-gone age, County Highway will serialise books from its own new publishing house. Editor David Samuels and editor-at-large Walter Kirn aim for the same relationship to its subjects “that Mark Twain and William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison and Tom Wolfe had when they wrote about America and Americans”.

Samuels says people read differently on the printed page than they do on a screen. “The printed page is an immersive experience without constant distractions or the spectre of other people’s responses on social media.”

Kirn adds that the publishers are “deeply and personally bored to death of hyperbolic chatter about politics, gadgets and the semiotics of Taylor Swift from people who know nothing and come from nowhere”.

• The Guardian (which publishes The Observer) is itself, set to launch a new magazine dedicated to long-form journalism. Called The Guardian Long Read, it’s 100 pages long, promises 55,000 words, and includes stories on subjects including “the disappearance of fish and chip shops and Durex’s pursuit of sexiness”.