The “New journalism” - The masterful essay - Short-form genres

Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

The “New journalism”
The masterful essay
Short-form genres

In the mid-1960s, a new form of essay writing materialized in conjunction with a group of journalists who broke away from traditional journalism to a much more free, candid, and creative style of reporting. From the invention of the printing press, this subjective form of journalism existed on the fringes of society, but it wasn’t until the emergence of New Journalism in the mid-’60s that this form of writing became popular and was considered a new genre of American literature, a rebellion from old journalism, and a critique of the American novel.

DEFINITION

New Journalism is a type of writing that relies on the reporter’s subjective interpretations and often features fictional dramatized elements to emphasize personal involvement.

The distinctive difference of New Journalism from traditional journalism is the style the writers attempt by making the story their own, drawn in and artistic in relation to the events that they report and comment upon. This journalism does not intend to be objective, and it exposes the writer’s commitment and personality.

New journalists have tested the techniques of subjectivity and still write within the frame of factual testimony. The biggest part of the style is that it has a direct correlation to the drastically new happenings and characters that were determining the American culture in the 1960s. It is an attempt to record and evaluate history by keeping language and attitude in step to the style of the events happening during the current era.

In New Journalism, then, the writer tells an intriguing, occasionally terrifying, occasionally comedic account of their own experience and other events that, normally, would not be reported by regular news outlets. The spirit of the traditional journalistic style is still there; however, there’s no filtering, depersonalizing, objectifying style of inoffensive reporting.

The new journalists seem to gravitate toward writing underground, “behind the news” stories rather than writing a more watered-down version that’s offered to the general public because it doesn’t run the risk of offending or creating thoughtful analysis from the readers. In fact, some people found the writing of New Journalists to be distasteful or confusing.

A new journalist would be interested in the details of the events, such as how the dealings he or she came upon were created or destroyed and how they affected his or her own thoughts and feelings, and the effect on the human experience and the people involved. They would create a thorough account of the event that would be written using all the tools of fiction and creative writing in general.

Here’s an example of New Journalism writing from “’Reunification by Bayonet’?” It records the opening of a new Museum of the Confederacy in Virginia:

The Confederate reenactors largely resembled their Union counterparts in physical appearance—mostly late middle-aged and portly—though a few were very young, perhaps even high schoolers. The uninhabited age gap between these extraordinarily young men and the elder majority struck me as odd.

Trailing just behind the last of the soldiers followed six women dressed in period attire. No one seemed to know who they were supposed to represent: prostitutes following the army? Mourners in search of dead family members? It didn’t seem to matter. When all had assumed their places off to the right of Mr. Rawls a generous round of applause ensued, exclamated by an anonymous “Yee-haw!” from somewhere in our midst.

This introductory procession having concluded, Mr. Rawls proceeded to introduce the notable politicians, educators, and benefactors in attendance, which included Virginia Lieutenant Governor William Bolling and renowned Civil War historian Dr. James “Bud” Robertson, both of whom were on the program to speak. Yet before he abdicated the podium Rawls delivered his own thoughts on the war and the museum, ambiguously noting that “Virginia stands alone in its history.” He concluded by thanking the museum staff via a quote from the African-American soul singer James Brown: “This is the hardest working group in show business.” As Waite beamed in the wake of the remark, no one around me laughed nor nodded. I concluded they either never had heard of James Brown or didn’t particularly care for the reference.

In the opening paragraph of the excerpt, the description of the reenactors is accompanied by the author’s own commentary on the age gap between the very young men and the middle-aged participants.

In the next paragraph, the author not only remarks that no one knew the purpose of the female reenactors, but offers his own possibilities as well. Near the end of the paragraph, he also offers dialogue when an anonymous person shouts, “Yee-haw!”

In the final paragraph of the excerpt, the author identifies more participants while also remarking upon the coolness with which the James Brown reference is met: an implicit commentary on the cultural makeup of the event’s audience.

WRITING PROMPT

Attend an event of your choice—sports match, concert, religious service—and then document it in the New Journalism style, mixing your own impressions with the facts that transpired.

New Journalists believe good writers take note of the world around them and then describe their own reactions to it, whether that reaction is predominantly objective, personal, or a little of both. Some critics, however, have often doubted the validity of the facts of these pieces. Other critics believe that the facts involved are not meant to be scrutinized because they’re the means to an end: to let the reader experience the world they have researched, experienced, and written about.

In any event, New Journalism is fundamentally more artistic than the previous nonfiction essays you’ve been introduced to. Although mostly nonfiction in form, it utilizes other elements of creative writing to generate greater verisimilitude.

As the 1960s came to an end, the peak of New Journalism started to fade. However, as the excerpt from the preceding essay attests, its influence remains in the present. Its chief practitioners often are identified as Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Wolfe is still alive at the time of the of this book’s composition, yet it’s interesting that his fictional work often has been belittled by contemporary novelists such as Norman Mailer and John Updike as inferior in nature to their own. Although each of the three New Journalist writers penned novels, they remain primarily an influence on journalists as opposed to fiction writers—hence their appearance in this chapter among the various kinds of essay writing.

Yet it remains that, whatever their shortcomings within the realm of fiction, New Journalism writers operate using a genre that possesses the ability to show any era of American culture better than any perhaps other style of writing.

The least you need to know

·  Expository essays present data and concepts in an effort to explain something.

·  Descriptive essays rely on details and the five senses to capture the essence of something.

·  Persuasive or argumentative essays aggressively try to prove one side of an argument while presenting the whole picture.

·  The New Journalism was a historical movement that still exists today and allows for the reactions of the author and the use of creative writing techniques not traditionally associated with essays.