1. New Journalism
It's inception and (relatively) quick death
By Jordan Tichenor

2. New Journalism

New Journalism is a term that is used to describe a
movement of journalism that was prominent
primarily during the 1960's and 70's

There is no one defining quality to describe what
New Journalism is; every writer who is ascribed to
this movement was only known for using 'non-
traditional' techniques

Therefore, it is a very broad term with examples
from many writers utilizing a variety of different
'non-traditional' techniques

3. Pre-1960's/70's

Journalistic writing style adhered to a strict
and rigid set of rules

Notably, these rules required the writers to:
− Keep themselves out of the story
− Follow a sraightforward, barebones writing
style
− Practice complete objectivity

4. New Journalism (at it's beginnings)

One of the earliest examples of New Journalism
was a 1962 Esquire article about heavyweight
boxing champion Joe Louis, written by Gay Talese.

Tom Wolfe, whose name would later become
irrevocably tied to New Journalism, said of the
article,
− “(It) wasn't like a magazine article at all. It was
like a short story. It began with a scene, an
intimate confrontation between Louis and his
third wife...”

5. New Journalism (at it's beginnings)

According to Wolfe, Talese was the first to
apply a novelistic or fictional style of writing
to a journalistic piece (although this is hard
to confirm)

Talese would say in a panel discussion
(printed in Writer's Digest in 1970) that
despite the fictional look of his work and
others like it, it was still “Fact reporting, leg
work.”

6. Hell's Angels and Hunter Thompson

Hunter S Thompson is often considered to
be one of the biggest names in “New
Journalism”

In 1965, Thompson spent a year riding with
the Hells Angels motorcycles gangs, and
gave a running commentary of all the
activities he observed and participated in,
before being “stomped” by the gang.

7. Hell's Angels and Hunter Thompson

This experience gave him the material for his first
book, “Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible
Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs”, while being
somewhat more traditional, still exhibited a couple
major non-traditional features
− Thompson put himself into the story (he used the
word “I”)
− He used a narrative style of writing
− He passed value judgments on the events and
people he was reporting on

8. The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
and Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe, already a prominent journalist,
and an avid proponent of New Journalism,
spent time following Ken Kesey (“One Flew
Over the Cuckoos Nest”) and his band of
Merry Pranksters.

Wolfe mainly focused on their heavy use of
psychadelics, and what this meant in terms
of the culture

9. 
Wolfe also put himself into the story, but kept
his writing relatively objective. However, he
not only wrote it as a narrative, but used a
variety of poetic techniques as well, often
describing things in a metaphorical way and
formatting the text in odd ways in order to
convey the sense of the Acid culture

10. In Cold Blood and Truman
Capote

Truman Capote was already an established
novelist, being known for works such as
“Breakfast at Tiffanys” and “A Christmas
Memory”

He began writing “In Cold Blood” after
reading an article in The New York Times
about the murder of a family in Kansas

11. 
Capote called the book a “nonfiction novel”,
as it was written in the manner of a novel (as
were the previous two books)

More than describe the crime, it described
the effect of the crime on the killer and the
community, thereby interjecting a great
amount of personal opinion and views into
the work, while accurately reporting the
events

12. The similarities and the
discrepancies

There were no “rules” in terms of this type of
journalism. Thompson, Wolfe, and Capote
all seemed to stress different things.

Thompson seemed to want to do something
completely different than had ever been
done before and throw out all the rules

13. 
Some light might be shed on this mentality
from how Wolfe described Thompson
− “Hunter's life, like his work, was one long
barbaric yawp, to use Whitman's term, of
the drug-fueled freedom from and mockery
of all conventional proprieties that began in
the 1960s. In that enterprise Hunter was
something entirely new, something unique
in our literary history.”

Tom Wolfe from his Wall Street Journal piece on Hunter Thompson 2/22/05

14. 
Wolfe and Thompson seemed to appreciate
each others work, although they
acknowledged that they had different
empahsis'
− “We were a new kind of writer, so I felt it
was like a gang. We were each doing
different things, but it was a natural kind of
hook-up.”
− Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism No.1, Interviewed by Douglas
Brinkley, Terry McDonell

15. 
Thompson seems to have never commented
on Capote's work, but Wolfe was quite
critical of “In Cold Blood,” as shown in his
1976 essay in Mauve Gloves & Madmen,
Clutter & Vine, titled “Pornoviolence”.
− "The book is neither a who-done-it nor a will-they-be-caught,
since the answers to both questions are known from the
outset ... Instead, the book's suspense is based largely on a
totally new idea in detective stories: the promise of gory
details, and the withholding of them until the end."

16. Death of New Journalism

In a 1975 issue of Commonweal, Thomas
Powers asked “Whatever happened to the
New Journalism?”

In 1981, Jocera published an article in
Washington Monthly in which he asserted
that New Journalism was dead, and blamed
it on Hunter Thompson taking the idea too
far.

17. Works Cited

Krim, Seymour. “Why They Aren't Writing
the Great American Novel Anymore,”
Esquire, December, 1972, p. 152.

“The Birth of 'The New Journalism';
Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe” New
York, February 14, 1972. p. 45