New Journalism

New Journalism was the name given to a style of news writing and journalism. It was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in 1973 when he published "The New Journalism." Wolfe unwittingly published his first New Journalism style article in 1963; having trouble writing an assignment, he sent his editor an unstructured narrative letter rather than the tight piece usually expected of a journalist of that time. Wolfe's letter had the original title There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm).... The editor chose simply to remove the salutation from Wolfe's letter and print it as received. The title was later contracted to The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and became the title of Wolfe's first book of collected essays, published in 1965. Wolfe once proclaimed that New Journalism “would wipe out the novel as literature's main event”. Articles in the New Journalism style tended not to be found in newspapers, but rather in magazines such as The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Esquire Magazine, CoEvolution Quarterly and for a short while Scanlan's Monthly.

Wolfe identified the four main devices New Journalists borrowed from literary fiction:

Telling the story using scenes rather than historical narrative as much as possible
Dialogue in full (Conversational speech rather than quotations and statements)
Third-person point of view (from inside the head of a character)
Recording everyday details (which indicates the status of character's lives)

Despite these elements, New Journalism is not fiction. It maintains elements of reporting including strict adherence to factual accuracy and the writer being the primary source. To get "inside the head" of a character, the journalist asks the subject what they were thinking or how they felt.

Journalists recognised as using the style include Joan Didion, P. J. O'Rourke, George Plimpton,Terry Southern and Gay Talese. Hunter S. Thompson was a major practitioner of new journalism and Gonzo journalism, his own spin-off. Thompson's first book, The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, is a more conventional piece, and uses the first person only to provide information on the Hells Angels. His later work, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, focus more on his own experiences and emotions.

The range of subjects covered by writers writing in the new journalism style covered most areas that journalism would normally cover. The psychedelic movement was something that many of the writers of the period covered, such as in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Vietnam War and was another common topic, as was the political turmoil on the homefront. Terry Southern's Grooving in Chi documented the 1968 Chicago National Democratic Convention for Esquire Magazine in new journalism manner. New journalism's techniques were also applied to less obvious subjects, such as financial markets (by George Goodman under the pseudonym Adam Smith, originally published in New York Magazine and later collected in a book called The Money Game.)

Some authors of conventional fiction switched to writing in the style of new journalism, such as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night.

External links

The Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved by Hunter S. Thompson

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Gourt Home::Gourt :: New Journalism

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