--Gerald Stanley Lee, 1900.

The words "New Journalism" were first shouted in the early 1960s. No one really knows who said it first, but there is little doubt about who said it loudest. Tom Wolfe became the spokesman and main defender of the loosely-related work that mixed reportorial qualities of journalism with storytelling techniques of fiction, essay, autobiography and other forms of literary prose. The New Journalists, wrote Wolfe:

¶According to Wolfe, a handful of New York feature writers --primarily, Jimmy Breslin and himself at the Herald Tribune and Gay Talese at the New York Times-- discovered "that it just might be possible to write journalism that would...read like a novel" (9).

Others consider Truman Capote the founder of New Journalism. His 1965 book In Cold Blood, the nonfiction story of the brutal murder of a Kansas farm family and its consequences, was hugely successful. Capote spent five years interviewing everyone connected to the case. He reconstructed the crime and followed the fates of the murderers. He did not, however, call In Cold Blood journalism, new or otherwise (Wolfe, 1973, 26). He declared the book "immaculately factual" and claimed to have invented a new literary genre, the "nonfiction novel" (Capote, 1974, 187). Most critics considered Capote among the New Journalists movement nonetheless, and the book's fame brought a great deal of attention to the concept of literary nonfiction, often thought an oxymoron. As Tom Wolfe said, In Cold Blood "gave the New Journalism...an overwhelming momentum" (1973, 26).

New Journalism grew increasingly popular, the ranks of those trying their hands at it expanding to include writers as diverse as Michael Herr, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion and Norman Mailer. From their work a set of general identifying qualities emerged, which James E. Murphy categorized as "an artistic, creative, literary reporting form with three basic traits: dramatic literary techniques; intensive reporting; and reporting of generally acknowledged subjectivity" (qtd. by Flippen, 16).

New Journalism was not new at all, however. Anyone who seriously examined the nonfiction of the past 50 to 100 years saw that. To ignore the nonfiction of Hemingway, Orwell, Agee and Hersey, among others, took an almost a deliberate effort. Wolfe, for instance, found a way to cubbyhole and dismiss each of these writers as something other than a New Journalist. Nevertheless, since before the turn of the century, writers have experimented with reshaping literary styles to "allow passage across the borders between journalism, autobiography, and reporting and sociology" (Sims, 1990, v-vi). Like the New Journalists, these earlier writers wrote nonfiction with techniques usually considered tools of fiction: dialogue, narration, scene setting, point of view, imagery, foreshadowing, metaphor, irony and symbol. Their purpose was to reveal the color, perspective, depth and humanity of real life. They sought to "do the timely thing with the eternal touch" (Lee, 234). It is clear, New Journalism was not revolutionary; it was evolutionary. As George Hough III wrote, "It is another stage in a long and gradual evolution of journalistic techniques" (qtd. by Connery, 1992, 18).

What was new about New Journalism was that it got noticed. Though many early works of literary nonfiction had common ideas among them, they were relatively few and far between. Before the New Journalism, most writers experimenting with nonfiction seemed to think they were acting alone. So, too, did critics. Thus, the "artists of nonfiction" got little attention collectively. New journalism, by describing itself as a genre in its ten or fifteen years, managed to stir up controversy both among journalists and literary critics.

The source of much of the dispute surrounding New Journalism can be traced to Wolfe's 1973 book The New Journalism. Wolfe's primary interest with New Journalism was how it reflected on the state of the novel. He thought contemporary novelists had abandoned realism in search of a more intellectual mode of discourse, which he likened to engineers giving up electricity (1973, 41). In Wolfe's view, the New Journalists recovered realism and applied its powers to nonfiction, a more vital arena than the imagination in that day and age. New journalism, he predicted, would overtake the novel as "literature's main event" (9). Not surprisingly, Wolfe's remarks grabbed the attention of a few literary critics.

The New Journalists also caught the eye of the mainstream press. Unlike their predecessors, the nonfiction writers of the 1960s called what they were doing "journalism" and criticized mainstream journalism. "All external reality as it's being presented in the multimedia of today seems less and less like reality as we individuals experience it," wrote one proponent of the New Journalism (Pinkham, 66). Such criticisms had been made before, but never on the scale that the New Journalists brought it to. Literary nonfiction had never been a movement before. The New Journalists declared that their work, which was so stylized and subjective, presented the reality and truth of events that The New York Times never could.

The hubbub raised by the New Journalists provoked mainstream journalists to take pokes at the trendy form, but also to examine their profession, to examine their own weaknesses and even make changes. In 1974, Charles Flippen wrote in his book Liberating the Media:

New journalism inspired a generation of journalists and influenced the future of the American press. New journalism was not new, but it was a major step in the development of an emerging genre. Most importantly, it spurred critics to take a look at earlier literary nonfiction not just as individual pieces but as a direction in journalism as well as in literature. The immediate descendants of the New Journalists, writers like Tracy Kidder and John McPhee, continued to make steps in this expansive direction. They brought to their a heightened concern for accuracy and primacy of the subject. Thus, bringing it closer to journalism. They moved away from the vices of the New Journalists, who tended to be "flashy" and "self-serving" (Sims, 1984, 5).

Since the 1970s, the work of the "artists of nonfiction" of the past century have been discussed collectively under various terms including "literary nonfiction," "artistic nonfiction," "literary newswriting," "nonfiction novel" and "literary journalism." Using the word "journalism" to describe this kind of writing is always an issue, and some critics have apparently sought to avoid the controversy by applying more innocuous names. When critics discuss "artistic nonfiction" or "literary newswriting," they are ignoring an essential and powerful element of much of the writing, that it was written as journalism or was written in opposition to modern journalism's conventions.

On the other hand, those who have used the word "journalism" have neglected some of the journalistic issues brought up by critics of the New Journalists. In the introduction to A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism, Thomas Connery explains that he prefers the word "journalism" over "nonfiction" or any of the other terms used:

This explanation overlooks many of the important differences between standard journalism and the literary variety. The difference is more than stylistic. It is in how material is gathered, what kind of stories are chosen, how the stories are told and the purpose for telling them. Literary journalism, in fact, often does not resemble what most people consider journalism at all. Connery has laid out why the designation of "journalism" is desirable. But is it deserved?

The first step to answering this question might be to step back and examine what conventional journalism is, what its motives are and how its conventions came to be.

For most of this century, the central philosophy of journalism has been tied to detachment and objectivity. Modern journalism deals with facts. In Philosophy and Journalism Jack Odell and John Merrill defined a fact as any of the following: "an existent state of affairs, an episode in time, a convention, a belief, a conscious process" (53). To most reporters, a fact is a recorded statement such as a quote or something that can be traced to a document, an observed action or condition. In journalism facts are verifiable, not speculative. A fundamental belief of the mainstream press is that the reporters' personal opinions, impressions and emotions are usually irrelevant to a news story and tend to slant the story toward a particular point of view. The common belief is that reporters should tell only of what actually exists or happened, not of what they think or felt to have happened.

Journalists have sought to reflect society as plainly as a mirror. The standards of detachment and objectivity are meant to keep the glass clean, to limit the author's personal biases from distorting his reportage. The journalist is "detached" in that he is an observer of events, rather than a participant or commentator. However, as Erich Fromm wrote:

The journalist's interest, whatever his subject, is a judicial truth, which can be documented and quantified. Competent journalists work quite a lot like the justice system. They hear witnesses and compare opposing viewpoints. They gather opinions and observations to develop a consensus view of events. Objectivity also implies "unbiased selection of facts and true-to-nature emphasis and deemphasis of these facts" (174), supposing, of course, that this is possible.

The plain style of journalism is the vehicle and symbol for its objectivity. Straight-forwardly describing issues and events, the journalist's style follows from detachment and objectivity. Description and detail beyond the basic and essential are avoided. To include the degree of description which is usual in an essay or in other nonfictional forms, the reporter essentially quotes himself, for description is the writer's own perception written into the work, stated without the "I think" attached.

There is, of course, no such thing as a truly objective reporter. Even the most devout advocates of objective reporting recognize total neutrality is impossible. Objectivity in reporting is more or less a matter of social negotiation. The journalist uses language and style generally agreed upon to be neutral enough so as to not distort the facts. As John J. Pauly put it, objectivity is "a set of shared stylistic conventions for dramatizing authenticity" (122).

The ideals of objectivity and detachment began to make their way into journalism just before the turn of the century. Previously, journalism had a personal tone and human character. It was also often highly partisan. In the 1830s, the so-called "dark ages" of American journalism, newspapers were full of party politics and opinion. Frank Luther Mott, in American Journalism, wrote of the period, "Few papers were ably edited; they reflected the crassness of the American society of the times. Scurrility, assaults, corruption, blatancy were commonplace" (169). Political parties controlled most American newspapers until after the turn of the century, when neutral reporting was increasingly recognized as a greater service to the public as well as to sales.

A major change in newswriting resulted from journalism becoming big business. With readership and competition at an all-time high around the turn of the century, newspapers had to become efficient to survive. The personalized tone of traditional journalism was lost, at least partly, in the quest for efficiency. As Mott wrote, "It is undeniable that papers doing a large business tended to stress...business at the expense of a personalized editorship" (547). Lincoln Steffens wrote in 1897 that "The magnitude of financial operations of the newspaper is turning journalism upside down" (547). He was correct, though in a more literal sense than he realized. In becoming efficient, journalism in the early twentieth century developed the "inverted pyramid" structure for news stories. Within this system, information is arranged in a hierarchy of importance, the most important facts coming first. Paragraphs are constructed to contain independent points which can be removed without affecting the paragraph which it precedes or follows. This allowed editors to shorten a story easily if necessary.

The influence of business in the evolution of journalism is somewhat dubious. The New Journalists were quick to wield the fact against the mainstream press. "'Objective' journalism," scoffed Jack Newfield, "developed with the teletype and radio news" (qtd. by Gold, 300). Peter Hamill, also a New-J, characterized standard reporters not as writers with analytical minds of their own but as "clerks of fact" (66). Such critics asserted that "objectivity" had developed for the sake of making news organizations manageable, to make news a sort of packageable product, rather than along any philosophical lines, and were, therefore, invalid.

Nevertheless, the mainstream press has attained a great deal of credibility in America. It carries a near-scientific authority. It is fair to say, I think, that many people's concept of journalism has primarily to do with its objective style and detached attitude towards subject matter. To most, journalism is the authoritative and disinterested tone, the way the newspapers read and the way news anchors speak. However, journalists developed the conventions for a purpose, to reflect society as cleanly as possible. The conventions do not define journalism; their purpose does. Often the conventions are mistaken for the purpose. Surely, it is inadequate to define journalism by its style and methods. A definition must encompass its very basic motives and goals.

Literary journalists take a different tack in fulfilling what they see as journalism's purpose. They try to give a more life-like picture of events. Also, literary journalists are not necessarily motivated by what might usually be considered newsworthy. They write about the everyday lives of their subjects, how they live and what they think and feel, "everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs" (Wolfe, 1973, 32). The kind of detail literary journalists seek to expose is not just fact, but other essential qualities of their subjects, literary detail. The writer aims to show the human impact of facts. Literary journalists try to describe subjects with poetry, passion and, most importantly, understanding. They interpreted what they see, expressing sense and emotion. Their goal is to reveal color, perspective, depth and humanity.

Literary journalists engage their subjects, usually spending a good deal of time with them, several days or weeks, in some cases longer. This immersion reporting is often, though not always, a fundamental element of literary journalism. In some instances, the reporter becomes involved with his subject to such a degree that he ceases to be an observer and becomes a participant, a co-subject. The reporter's perspective and impressions thus become even more relevant to the story. Unlike the conventional journalist who acts strictly as an observer and researcher, the writer who has experienced his subject first-hand, who has lived it, is as qualified to speak about the subject as anyone he might interview. The reporter is justified in quoting himself.

Literary journalists do not include themselves in their stories merely because they can justify it, however. One of the central concepts of literary journalism is that the personal impressions and emotions of the writer, reveal rather than distort subjects. Literary journalists hold that the subjective experience is often an essential part of understanding it. Subjectivity is an essential element of any literary writing. It is the personal consciousness and talent of the writer which enables him to describe life. In literary journalism, the personality of the writer enters the work in several ways. First, every bit of description beyond the most schematic develops through the consciousness and imagination of the writer. Often in literary journalism the voice of the reporter is plainly written in the first person. But even in works written in the third-person, the writer's personality is always written into the work, just as with any piece of creative writing.

In conventional journalism, the pronoun "I" is seen as the symbol of subjectivity, the sign of bias. Its presence in a sentence demotes the statement, if it is billed as journalism, to the lower reaches of the genre. It is not surprising, then, that the New Journalists' popularization a first-person or otherwise subjective narratives within journalism was controversial. Herbert Gold wrote of New Journalism, "First personism has become an epidemic contagion" (284). To those like Gold, subjective narratives were an abandonment of objectivity and neutrality. But was it? Is there a fundamental difference between a first-person narration and the objective style?

Whether reporters witness an event for themselves or reconstruct the event through the statements of witnesses, the shape the report will take is centered in the writers themselves. It depends upon what angle they see the event from, who they ask questions, and what questions they ask. All these variables depend not on chance, but on who the reporter is as a person, his opinions and prejudices, etc. In writing the report, reporters must constantly make decisions about what information to use and how to arrange it. If they are scrupulous, they arrange and present material in a way that best represents the subject. They will make their choices with regard to a principle of objectivity. But regardless, before narrative style is necessarily decided, reporters make numerous choices based on what they see as the reality of the event.

Some critics of the objective style believe that not only is it not completely objective, but that it is "the most disorienting form of discourse yet invented by man" (Kenner, 183), "a figleaf for covert prejudice" (Newfield) and "Nothing beats it as a vehicle for profitable lies" (Kenner, 186). It is disorienting, they assert, because the objective style indicates objectivity but cannot assure it. Something may be written in an objective style, but not be objective at all. The style seems unconnected to an opinion or agenda; it seems just to state facts, but these facts can nonetheless be presented and arranged deliberately to misrepresent the subject. "It is well known by successful propagandists that there is no more effective way of distortion than to offer nothing but a series of facts --disjointed, isolated, unrelated, and taken out of context" (Odell & Merrill, 176). A seemingly objective statement of fact can be every bit as opinionated, as any plainly stated opinion.

Of course, abusing the claim of objectivity and neutrality is just that, abuse. Also, pointing out areas where conventional journalist abuse journalism's standards, does not make a literary form of journalism any less susceptible to the same abuses as well as some, perhaps, to which conventional journalism is immune. Nevertheless, as Ronald Weber wrote in The Reporter as Artist:

The essential difference between the personal voice and the impersonal one is mostly stylistic. As Thoreau wrote, "It is, after all, always the first person speaking." Whether it is downplayed with an authoritative style or declared outright, the shaping presence of the writer cannot be erased. Therefore, something stated with the acknowledgement of the "I" could be every bit as objective and detached as one written in the impersonal style. Literary philosopher John Searle pointed out that "the distinction we commonly make between factual and fictional statements is based, not on any characteristic of the statements themselves, but on the perception of the kind of statement being intended" (qtd. by Heyne, 480). We expect something written in an objective style to adhere to the guidelines of detachment and objectivity. Likewise, we expect a story speckled with "I" to primarily represent the author. Literary journalism disrupts this accustomed relationship between reader and writer by acknowledging and using subjectivity in their work.

Some find that the acknowledgement of self in journalism is a more honest mode of communication. Since no written description can completely mirror reality, the most any writer can do is to describe something in language that he thinks best represents it. Conventional journalism takes the tone of authority, of verified fact, that seems to guarantee its objectivity and detachment, though it cannot. In acknowledging their perspectives journalists take a step closer to a realistic form of objectivity.

Recognizing the "I" in journalism, however, is not just a nod to shortcomings of the objective style. Literary journalists use their personal impressions --their "I"-- to expose the living impact of facts. The expression of the less tangible and more subjective elements of existence, such as emotion and impression, have traditionally fallen into the realm of fiction, poetry, personal essay and other forms of literary writing. Authors of such works are free to use all the powers of written language and their imaginations. Creative writing, especially realistic writing, can capture life as it is lived and felt, often exposing the truth about something essential and eternal about life, a human truth. Literary journalists aim to show that this kind of truth exists not only in works of the imagination or in works of art that are somehow removed from daily life but in everyday events and circumstances. There are, of course, other "literary" forms of nonfiction writing, memoir, autobiography, essay, but none of them strive to document life's everyday events like journalism. The goal of the literary journalists is to document the story as well as express the emotional power of a story. Readers are meant to come away from the work with more than information with which they might form opinions. They are meant to acquire a feeling for or an understanding of the experience itself. Literary journalism is about impact as much as it is about fact.

* * *

At first glance, literary journalism seems to hold values almost wholly other than those of conventional journalism. Literary journalism does resemble what most people have come to know as journalism. So, how can it be called journalism? The answer is that literary journalism shares the same fundamental purpose of conventional journalism, to document history as it occurs. Journalists record the everyday happenings of the world, the ordinary and extraordinary, for the sake of their immediate and their general relevance and effect. In journalism the revelation of the subject takes precedence over all other elements in the story. Literary journalists seek to fill a void left within the mission of journalism by the conventions of the modern press. They want to fill the gap between facts and actual experience by providing insight in to the subjective aspects of reality.

A critical question that needs now to be asked about the genre is: How can such an imaginative and creative form of expression as what has been called "literary journalism" reveal anything more than the author? Doesn't the highly creative nature of literary journalism, which is a direct reflection of the author, necessarily turn the focus of the article onto the author himself?

Several critics of New Journalism thought so. In The Fables of Fact, John Hellman argues that "New journalism is a genre of fiction" (21) because of the "all-important" role of imagination (16). The New Journalist, claims Hellman, is "an interpretive consciousness standing outside factual events" (140). Hellman believed that in adding a literary element to nonfiction the "direction" of the work necessarily changes from an "outward pointing" objective description to an "inward pointing" creative interpretation of the subject by the author. In other words, by writing about something in a literary fashion, the author makes the subject his own. Rather than a description of external thing, the subject becomes an extension of the writer's own personality. Says Hellman of the literary journalist, his "ultimate goal is artistic" (21). Hellman finds that there can be no literary journalism. There is only literature and not-literature, and the literary primarily represents the author. In Hellman's approximation, art is synonymous with self-expression.

Ronald Weber wrote that "Literature as opposed to journalism is always a refracting rather than reflecting mechanism" (1974, 16). He, too, finds in the nature of creative writing a "distorting" element, which is "always located in the person of the writer himself, in the individual stamp he puts on his work" (17). Surely, Weber is correct that every creative writer's work has a particular shape and feel imparted by his individual personality. This is true of all writing but the most mathematical of prose. As the complexity of issues increases, as the writer takes on a greater task of showing the arrangement of objects and situations and their relation to one another, his subjective involvement in the work also increases. It cannot, therefore, be true that the literary element of writing, as far as it represents self-expression, be said to be either present or not present. As John Searle pointed out, "the literary is continuous with the nonliterary. Not only is there no sharp boundary, but there is not much of a boundary at all" (qtd. by Heyne, 487).

Since literary journalism is made up of what are often though of as distinctly separate kinds of writing --creative prose and journalism-- it is conceivable that the proportions of these ingredients may vary. The literary journalist shares the goals and motivations of both the journalist and the novelist, but these motives are not always balanced. Thus, literary journalism might be looked at as on a gradient between the strictly journalistic and the wholly creative (i.e. fiction).

In recognizing variation within literary journalism, I am not attempting to draw borders between certain kinds of literary journalism. Similar variations are recognized within fiction and journalism, too. There are significant differences, for example, between the journalism in The New York Times and The New York Post. Though the two papers might both be called conventional journalism, they vary in the kinds of information they relate and how they relate it. Likewise in fiction, some novels are complete works of the imagination, some are autobiographical, and others are historical novels, which are sometimes based on extensive research.

Most scholarship and criticism that arose from New Journalism focused on work that leaned more to the literary side than to the journalistic. The work of these writers, particularly Wolfe, Mailer and Capote, gave the literary critics the most fodder for "literary" consideration and gave the detractors of New Journalism the most to criticize. These writers had primarily literary goals in mind with their nonfiction. They made art from fact, allowing themselves to embellish characters and to structure their work with a creative idea in mind. Such work might be seen as essentially true to the story, even if it was not entirely true to physical reality. Critics like Hellman, however, see this kind of literary treatment of the nonfictional as dealing "with fact through fable."

Journalists who criticized the more literary of the New Journalists set up their arguments in terms of New Journalism being the opposite of objective journalism. They asserted that the New Journalists "compromise the facts in the interest of more dramatic reporting" (Talese, 1974, 35). Dwight MacDonald referred to New Journalism as "parajournalism." It is "a bastard form," he said, "having it both ways, exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction" (qtd. by Weber, 1974, 23). MacDonald believed that New Journalists billed themselves as journalists, yet did not adhere to the basic tenets objectivity and detachment which had earned journalism its authority. Similarly, Michael Arlen argued that the New Journalist had "small patience for the dreary conventions of the Old Journalism, although he rides upon its credibility" (Arlen, 253). Some members of the press saw the New Journalists as threatening to undermine "important sorts of trust" between readers and journalists by neglecting the conventions that built journalism's credibility (Hersey, 1980, 290). These criticisms came not just from the hard-nose "old" journalists, but from writers who themselves used literary techniques in journalism.

Literary journalism is not opposed to conventional journalism. Literary journalists do, however, recognize that conventional journalism cannot fully document life. They see aspects life that cannot be described with just facts, yet must be shown, and they attempt to "contrive techniques proper to its recording, communication, analysis, and defense" (Agee, 1936, xiv). The way in which a story will be written, therefore, depends not on any conventions but on the author and his experience of the subject. Not surprisingly, literary journalism includes a diverse collection of writing. While the authors generally share the desire to tell a true story in a true way, their approaches to the task vary, sometimes greatly. In fact, sometimes their goals and motives seem at odds. However, I do not claim that they are wrongly grouped together. How and to what degree these different writers are motivated by the journalistic purpose to document and the purpose of expressing themselves through creativity must be taken into consideration when assessing them as literary journalists.

The best and most interesting way to examine literary journalism is through the writing itself. In the following chapters, I will look at some of the work of a few of the most important writers in this emerging genre. The issue I keep in mind throughout is the question of how it is journalism? Why does the author take the particular tack he does? And what is the relationship between the subject matter the author and the reader?