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Reporting & Writing
New Journalism
New Journalism
 Journalism and truth
 Is objectivity the only way to
report reality?
 Tom Wolfe
 Jimmy Breslin
 Gay Talese
 Hunter S Thompson
 Gonzo
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New Journalism
Representations of truth
New Journalism
Representations of truth
 In all art we are familiar with
differences in representation
and technique
 In all cases it is a search for
truth –either through close
attention to the way things
appear (realism) or a more
symbolic representation of
what lies beneath (surrealism,
dadaism, etc.)
 But what about journalism?
Realismandsurrealism bothseek truth
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New Journalism
Representations of truth
 News is expected to be
“objective” –i.e. to be a
representation of reality as it is.
 We talk to someone, and quote
them verbatim.
 We get official facts and figures,
and repeat them.
 We take a picture, and use it
without manipulation.
 The readers, therefore, get an
undiluted account. The truth.
Thisisnotaphotographofwar
New Journalism
Representations of truth
 But journalism has not always
been “objective” nor impartial.
 In the 19th Century proprietors
used papers to push political
and business agendas.
 Stacked headlines make the
“news pyramid” style irrelevant
–the first line didn’t need to be
a punchy summary of the story.
 Reporters, paid by the line,
wrote in a long, expressive,
personal style.
TheNewYorkHeraldreportsLincoln’sdeath,1865
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New Journalism
Richard Harding Davis
“There was no selection of the unfittest; it seemed to be ruled by
unreasoning luck. A certain number of shells and bullets passed through
a certain area of space, and men of different bulks blocked that space in
different places. If a man happened to be standing in the line of a bullet he
was killed and passed into eternity, leaving a wife and children, perhaps,
to mourn him. ‘Father died,’ these children will say, ‘doing his duty.’ As a
matter of fact, father died because he happened to stand up at the wrong
moment, or because he turned to ask the man on his right for a match,
instead of leaning toward the left, and he projected his bulk of two
hundred pounds where a bullet, fired by a man who did not know him
and who had not aimed at him, happened to want the right of way. One of
the two had to give it, and as the bullet would not, the soldier had his
heart torn out.”
The Times, 1897. The Greek/Turkish war.
New Journalism
Representations of truth
 Harding Davis’ writing reads
like a novel.
 The modern form of objective,
concise journalism emerged in
the 19th Century with the
formation of news agencies.
 Sociologist Michael Schudson
(Discovering the News, 1978)
said “objectivity” only began to
take hold after the First World
War, as part of a debate over the
role of journalism.
Ateletypemachine -thefirstpresswire
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New Journalism
The New Journalists
 That leads us to the modern
NCTJ-style of impartial
journalism.
 But in the 1950s and 60s a
group of writers questioned
whether “objective” journalism
was capable of telling the whole
story –or the whole truth. It
was too sterile, too lifeless.
 Tom Wolfe labelled them the
New Journalists and wrote
their manifesto.
TomWolfe
New Journalism
The New Journalists
 New Journalism emerged in
the postmodern era –when
“objectivity” was being rejected
in favour of subjectivity,
psychoanalysis and relativism.
 It rejected the idea of the
journalist as passive observer
 It used multiple points of view,
stream of consciousness and
included the author as a
‘character’ and active
participant in the story.
Hiplanguage andcounterculture werekeythemes
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New Journalism
The New Journalists
 This is the closest journalism
has come to an artistic
“movement”.
 It followed beat generation
authors like Keroucand
Burroughs and their themes of
counterculture, generational
divides and youthful excess.
 And it applied a literary style to
journalism –Tom Wolfe said
the aim was to write “like a
novel”.
NewJournalismshared keythemeswithbeatwriters
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New Journalism
Wolfe
intro to Girl of the Year
-Profile of “It” girl Jane Holzer
“Bangs mains bouffantsbeehives Beatle
caps butter faces brush-on lashes decal
eyes puffy sweaters French thrust bras
flailing leather blue jeans stretch pants
stretch jeans honeydew bottoms eclair
shanks elf boots ballerinas Knight
slippers, hundreds of them, these
flaming little buds, bobbing and
screaming, rocketing around inside the
Academy of Music Theaterunderneath
that vast old mouldering cherub dome
up there —aren’t they supermarvelous!”
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New Journalism
Wolfe
intro to Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas
(Can’t hear you! Too noisy!) Las Vegas!!!!
-Profile of Las Vegas culture
“HERNIA, HERNIA, HERNIA, HERNIA,
HERNIA, HERNIA, HERNIA, hernia,
hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia,
HERNia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia,
HERNia, HERNia, HERNia; hernia,
hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia, hernia,
hernia, eight is the point, the point is
eight; hernia, hernia, HERNia; hernia,
hernia, hernia, hernia, all right, hernia,
hernia, hernia, hernia, hard eight, hernia,
hernia,hernia,, HERNia, hernia,hernia,
hernia, HERNia, hernia,hernia,hernia,,
HERNia, hernia,hernia,hernia,hernia”
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New Journalism
Wolfe
intro to The First Tycoon of Teen
-Profile of Phil Spector
“All these raindrops are highor
something. They don’t roll down the
window, they come straight back,
toward the tail, wobbling, like all those
Mr.Cool snow heads walking on
mattresses. The plane is taxiing out
toward the runway to take off, and this
stupid infarcted water wobbles,
sideways, across the window. Phil
Spector, twenty-three years old, the rock
and roll magnate, producer of Philles
Records, America’s first teen-age tycoon,
watches… this watery pathology… It is
sick, fatal.”
New Journalism
Write it “like a novel”
 Not just a question of language
and style.
 New Journalists attempted to
use narrative techniques and
symbolism of literature to
describe real people and
situations.
 Wolfe saw the possibilities of
the style after reading Gay
Talese’sprofile of the boxer Joe
Louis in Esquiremagazine.
ReporterGayTalese
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New Journalism
Talese
from The King as a Middle-aged Man
“ ‘Hi, sweetheart!’ Joe Louis called to his
wife, spotting her waiting for him at the
Los Angeles airport.
She smiled, walked toward him, and
was about to stretch up on her toes and
kiss him, but suddenly stopped.
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘where’s your tie?’
‘Aw, sweetie,’ he said, shrugging, ‘I stayed
out all night in New York and didn’t have
time.’
‘All night!’ she cut in. ‘When you’re out
here all you do is sleep, sleep, sleep.’
‘Sweetie,’ Joe Louis said, with a tired grin,
‘I’m an ole man.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but when you go to
New York you try to be young again.’”
New Journalism
The unscrupulous geek
Tom Wolfe
Introduction to The New
Journalism
TomWolfe
“My instinctive, defensive reaction
was that the man had piped it as
the saying went…winged it, made
up the dialogue…Christ maybe he
made up whole scenes the
unscrupulous geek…Really stylish
reporting was something no one
knew how to deal with, since no
one was used to thinking of
reporting as having an esthetic
(sic) dimension.”
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New Journalism
Narrative and symbolism
 Jimmy Breslin’scourt report on
crime boss Tony Provenzano
focussed on a shiny ring worn
on his pinkyfinger.
 He returns to the ring several
times –the sun glinting on it,
Provenzanoplaying with it
nervously.
 He ends the story with an
observation about the
prosecution lawyer: “Nothing
on his hand flashed. The guy
who sunk Tony Pro doesn’t
even have a diamond ring on
his pinky.”
JimmyBreslin
New Journalism
The “off-camera material”
“A crucial part of Breslin’swork
was the reporting he did. Breslin
made it a practice to arrive on the
scene long before the main event
in order to gather the off-camera
material, the by-play in the makeup room, that would enable him
to make character. It was part of
his modus operandi to gather
novelistic details, the rings, the
perspiration, and he did it more
skilfully than most novelists.”
TomWolfe
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New Journalism
The authenticity problem
 Journalism does not always
operate in neat narratives
 Many traditional journalists
were wary of New Journalism,
believing it would confuse fact
with fiction.
 It came to a head when New
York Magazine published Gail
Sheehy’s profile of a city
streetwalker, known as
Redpants.
 It emerged it was not a person
at all: Redpantswas a
composite of several people.
GailSheehy
New Journalism
Cultural response
 The writers also faced criticism
about their style and tone.
 Tom Wolfe was accused of
holding up a “fun house mirror”
to his subjects, distorting them
to fit his own perception of the
story.
 Truman Capote, whose In Cold
Blood, profiled a pair of mass
murderers on the run from
their perspective, was accused
of glamorising the villains.
Truman Capote
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New Journalism
Representations of truth
There are a lot of different ways of expressing what is true or real, but the
more abstract it gets, the harder is to assess as genuine or reliable.
New Journalism
Gonzo: The fool
Hunter SThompson
 One type of New Journalism
was never meant to be taken at
face value.
 It came to be known as Gonzo –
based on the Spanish for “fool”.
 Hunter S Thompson used the
device of acting weird, being
drunk, or high, to expose the
world in a way conventional
journalism could not.
 He also managed to get access
that other journalists could not:
including joining the Hell’s
Angels.
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New Journalism
Thompson
from Hell’s Angels
After being given $135 pooled cash to get
beer for the Angels on a run out to Bass
Lake, California –and considering
running off with it.
“I mentioned this on the way to town
after Sonny and Pete had agreed to
come with me. ‘You’d of come back with
it,’ Sonny said. ‘A person would have to
be awful stupid to run off with our beer
money.’ Pete laughed. ‘Hell, we even
know where you live. And Frenchysays
you got a boss-lookin’ old lady, too.’ He
said it jokingly, but I noted that raping
my wife was the first form of retaliation
that came to his mind.”
New Journalism
I was reporting a rumour…
 In 1972 Thompson was asked
to cover the Presidential
election for Rolling Stone.
 During the Democrat Primaries
he gave his press credentials for
a trip on a candidate’s train to a
drunk, then reported on the
chaos it caused.
 Then he wrote an article
accusing the early Democrat
favourite, Ed Muskie, of using a
strange hallucinogenic drug…
Hunter SThompson
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New Journalism
Thompson
from Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail 72
“Not much has been written about The
Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the
Presidential Campaign, but toward the
end of the Wisconsin primary race -about a week before the vote -word
leaked out that some of Muskie’s top
advisors had called in a Brazilian doctor
who was said to be treating the
candidate with “some kind of strange
drug” that nobody in the press corps
had ever heard of.
[…]
There was no doubt about it: The Man
from Maine had turned to massive
doses of Ibogaine as a last resort.
New Journalism
New Journalism’s legacy
 Gonzo inspired journalists to
become a part of their stories in
other ways.
 Chris Hitchens, in a feature for
Vanity Fair, submitted himself
to waterboarding as part of the
debate over whether it is
torture.
 His feature is in your reading
pack –both in ebookand pdf
format.
ChrisHitchingsiswaterboarded
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New Journalism
Hitchens
from Believe Me, It’s Torture
“I held my breath for a while and then
had to exhale and—as you might
expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation
brought the damp cloths tight against
my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had
been suddenly and annihilatingly
clamped over my face. Unable to
determine whether I was breathing in
or out, and flooded more with sheer
panic than with mere water, I triggered
the pre-arranged signal and felt the
unbelievable relief of being pulled
upright and having the soaking and
stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t
want to tell you how little time I lasted.”
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New Journalism
Next week…
Structure and technique of
New Journalism and longform non fiction.
Read:
 Meyer Berger, Veteran Kills 12 in
Mad Rampage on Camden
Street (reading pack)
 Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson’s
Apocalypse(excerpts in reading
pack. Full version in New
Journalism, ed. Tom Wolfe)
JoeEszterhas