"Your chance to meet the real..."
Most entertainment radio and TV use a type of feature - interview approach - eg Paxman - it is all about the presenter/writer being wonderfully clever and interesting.
One of the main practitioners in print is Lynn Barber - who does her journalism in the Observer she writes about her experience during and interview with Rachel Cusk; wrote about how Rachel behaved when asked questions connecting it with showing lots of knowledge about Rachel’s work analysing it at the same time; she tells Rachel’s life story n connection to when she wrote her books, about what kind of writer she is and where her inspiration comes from and even her childhood (muddling the style with a profile) etc.
Almost inevitably the "interview" is in fact an account of the great Lynn Barber having lunch with Graham Norton. She chucks in a few facts about Norton - thus muddling the style with a profile. It is entertaining writing but - as is normal with this style - we end up knowing more about Lynn than the subject.
The origins of this type of format was the "New Journalism" movement in New York in the '60s and was especially associated with Andy Warhol's "underground" magazine INTERVIEW in the 1970s.
Tom Wolfe, my personal favourite authors of The New Journalism described the style this way: “In contrast to a conventional journalistic striving for objectivity, subjective journalism allows for the writer’s opinion, ideas or involvement (…). Another version of subjectivism in reporting is sometimes called participatory reporting. Robert Stein, in Media Power, defines New Journalism as “A form of participatory reporting that evolved in parallel with participatory politics…” Tom Wolfe
Another fantastic practitioner of The New Journalism (Gonzo) Hunter S Thompson, for example, once famously interviewed President Nixon and spoke only about American football, beer and things like that... and this was at the height of the Vietnam war.
So it is all very fashionable in both approach and content. It is entertaining, and therefore has its place. The important thing is not to mix this style with profile writing just because you have seen it on the telly.
TV equivalents: Live 'n' Kickin'; Mrs Merton; Parkinson... and Graham Norton.
*From Chris Horrie's notes
*From Chris Horrie's notes
