The New Journalism

American Journalism, late 20th Century: This saw the inception of the 'Penny Papers'  in America and in turn American Journalism - though at the time this was ran b politicians and or merchants who were pretty subjective and bias. This did mean that the public people could write news and mid 19th century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire service. The associated press believed news should be objective and neutral - to please the highest number of people.

Developed along this line was the Yellow Press and this had the idea of shaking up the papers, adding sensationalism* and pictures - going for the shock and awe approach - to reel people in. This sparked a circulation war between two rival papers - the first owned by William Randolph Hearst and the second by Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst focused on drama, romance, crimes which is really the inception of tabloids.

*Sensationalism - huge, emotive headlines =, massive, striking images. This was the Yellow Press and the first wave of real journalism. Yellow journalism focused on sin, sex and violence but there was also good journalism; investigative for example tried to route out all corruption.

Journalism is very formulaic, insofar as we are constricted to the facts, a story must have so many paragraphs, the top line must be 20 words and so on. New Journalism was an attempt to record events by mirroring the language and style of the way the events happened - this was referred to as 'letting it bleed into the copy'.

Political and cultural scene: America in the 1960's and 70's was a highly bad time There was a great deal of social and political upheaval because this was the time of the highly unpopular Vietnam War and President JFK was assassinated. He was a man who embodied the American dream and was outstandingly popular with everyone - to quote Forrest Gump: "Then one day, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young man"

The Vietnam war happened by proxy pretty much - America had beef with Russia and they were allied and this meant that people were being conscripted into the army without any choice. Also during this time period there was a huge change to the demographic of America - the baby bomb. So many children were being born and this in turn created a youth culture that had access to political powers and the state had to keep in check - young people of this time were the voice of radical political change - free love, hippies and so on; this created an age clash like you wouldn't believe, it was very much young against the uptight old and this did not sit well.

Sexual revolution: This was all about sexual freedom - in the mid 1960's women had the access to, and the choice to use, birth control and regulation. This is exceedingly important to existentialists as I have mentioned previously - choice to them is everything, no matter what you do you must choose, you must have the freedom to do so. For example, you could choose to have a sexual partner who you didn't end up marrying; this is what Reichman was talking about with free love - you must constantly satisfy the ID - said that Freud had it wrong, we should always express ourselves and not bottle it up, bottling it up made things so much worse - we need to let it all hang loose. This was our way to happiness, by having great sexual experiences.

The student movement: This movement was highly militant and radical. University's became the center of radical politics, so much so that the police conducted raids on schools and tried to quell these ideas by bashing some skulls in. This movement saw women and black people marching vehemently for political rights - groups like the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. This is when LSD was created by the CIA and distributed around in an attempt to try and control the minds of young people and radicals - getting a bit 1984 on us there, guys. All these attempts at control and the general upheaval created underground sub-cultures such as hippies and so on, the general feeling was that all sub-cultures were deviant.

Music played a vital role in counter-cultures and according to Sartre music like Jazz was highly authentic and if you choose to listen to it you are not living in bad faith. The music of the time was an outright attack on the establishment, for example iconic bands such as The Doors - their music was all about being against the state and Bob Dylan was massively influential and popular for his anti-establishment songs. This type of music was fuel for the movement, it fed the people and was political.

Influence of Existentialism: Heidegger's authenticity, Sartre's bad faith and the key ideas that came with them - freedom and choice. Fanon held the view that in order to walk a path to freedom and happiness was attained through choice - our choices create our life. Think of an existentialist x-ray machine, you go through the machine and the data that will come up will be every single choice you have made in your life. Fanon believed that the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice - this being choice that had a real and immediate impact, put simply violence always gets us to the point faster. Gotta love violence.

New Journalism: The anti-establishment feeling came into journalism and this was the feeling that "there is a police officer inside your head and he must be destroyed". Journalists question whether writing stories that had come from press releases, official statements and conferences was objective or not. This paved a way for new forms of journalism to emerge.

Journalists, being formulaic, always looked towards the setting, plot, feelings. quotes and images and had to take into account all the facts and the truth. Writers like Truman Capote, a favorite of mine, were new breads of journalists. Capote's phenomenal book In Cold Blood is still on of my favorite books of all time - I love the way it's written, presenting the facts and telling a story in the form of fiction, the personal accounts, and the overall journey. But most importantly, to me at least, the sympathy that Capote demonstrates throughout the book is both terrifying and enthralling.

New Journalism's 'objectivity' is pretty much trashed in subjunctive experience, for example Tom Wolfe wrote an article about a bunch of big time fat cats inviting members of the Black Panthers to a fancy shindig and simply observing the situation. Wolfe admired the writer Emile Zola - he thought that the way he wrote was the correct way to write - you observe people and describe how they act, Dickens also used this style. Zola was exceedingly descriptive, like a Sherlock Holmes level of perception, spending many many pages explaining every individual part of a person - the way they walk, the watch they wear, the shoes and so on.

Wolfe describes Zola: "Zola crowned himself as a first scientific novelist, a naturalist to use his term, studying the human form"

Dialog became increasingly popular and people started to use this - Dickens and Zola's technique of writing and description seeped it's way into feature writing. For example there was a feature which depicted a boxer, well past his prime, and he has just stepped off a plane to meet his wife - then conversations ensue and this is the dialog - the key is to attempt to reciprocate exactly what they said and how they say it onto a page, every single detail. This is a very time costly process and can take days, weeks even years to accomplish. There are four stages according to Wolfe about how features should be. He claims that features should be done:

1) Scene by scene, you need to be there and you need to make the reader feel like they're there.
2) They must reflect the realistic dialog - this allows us to read into the people but capturing the dialog perfectly is wicked difficult
3) You must get into their minds, learn everything you can about them - their thoughts and emotions and more importantly the reader should be able to as well.
4) Attention to the fine details - their whole world, their characteristics - how they walk and so on. You gain insight through attention to the detail.