The New Journalism. Seminar Paper.

The New Journalism

The new Journalism is an anthology of Journalism put together by Tom Wolfe in 1974. In it, Wolfe writes about a change in the style of the journalism that was being produced at the time. This style of Journalism changed the standard journalistic technique of ‘telling’ to ‘seeing’, describing the scene and allowing the readers to form an opinion based on the descriptions that they were being given. Journalists began to make themselves part of the action as opposed to staying in the peripheries of the story as narrators. This led to objective pieces of journalism being left behind, to be replaced by subjective, dialogue led pieces of writing, and literary devices not dissimilar to fictional novels by the likes of Charles Dickens. Dickens would be able to tell his reader a lot about the backgrounds and personalities of his characters using physical descriptions and traits alone.

Wolfe explains how the new journalism works using four points.

1.Scene by scene construction:

This requires the Journalist to actually experience events rather than just recounting them from other sources. It also involves more detail than a typical account of an event, really allowing the reader to fully understand everything that is occurring.

2. Dialogue in full:

Dialogue needs to be recorded as accurately as possible, to give the reader a full understanding of the character, this may include writing transcribing what somebody says phonetically if for example they have an accent, or a speech impediment. When reporting what other people are saying, the reader should be reading it in their voice, not in yours.

3. Use of the third person

Pretty self-explanatory, this really helps to give the feel of a story being told.

4. Status Details

Wolf describes the 'social autopsy' that should take place when describing somebody. A description should involve small details that say things about their place in society. For example, if a journalist were describing an encounter with David Cameron, they may mention the brand of socks that he wore, and find out how much those socks cost, as to potentially portray him as wealthy.

Hunter S. Thompson, author of fear and loathing in Las Vegas, is widely regarded as a founder of ‘gonzo journalism’, a key aspect of the new journalism. In Fear and Loathing, he details a trip to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400 motor race, with a car full of mind altering drugs and alcohol. His writing focuses on his personal experiences exactly as he saw them when intoxicated, making himself the main character in the story. Wolfe mentions that doing this can be annoying for the reader, but by involving dialogue of other characters, it ensures that the story is still told fully. Thompson constantly uses dialogue to detail the conversations that he has had with others or overheard in his surroundings. Even through his drug addled fusion of fiction and reality, Thompson manages to convey a damning social commentary of Las Vegas and America as a whole at the end of the 1960s. 

Around the time of both Wolfe and Thompson’s writings, America was undergoing huge political and social upheaval. JFK’s was seen by many as a symbol of hope, and his assassination in 1963 highlighted the problems that America was facing. The Civil right movement was in full flow, racial tensions were high and the war in Vietnam was still being fought and seen by many as an unnecessary and unwinnable war. Muhammad Ali refused to go to war and is famously quoted for saying : “I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong.“ There was a general anti-establishment feel attitude around the country; this was buoyed by the student protest movement and the sexual revolution. In Journalism, objectivism from officials, particularly in government was starting to be questioned. The use of LSD was common and helped finding different ways to view things. Liberation and change were the 'geist' of the time These cultural characteristics of America are all clear in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, just through Hunter S. Thompson’s description of his experiences.

Today, the new journalism can be found everywhere. TV documentaries often use gonzo journalists such as Louis Theroux to look into the lives of controversial people or organisations; TV makes this form of journalism easier, as the desired message can easily be achieved through a series of cleverly selected shots. The new journalism is also seen in fly on the wall documentaries, where there is little to no narration, and the story is told entirely through the dialogue and pictures that are chosen by the editor. Newspaper articles on a daily basis feature aspects of the new journalism, celebrity interviews and human interest stories tend to rely on minimal exposition.