The New Journalism was a generational change in the popular culture in the USA. The new alternative society (‘living in the tipi one’) was influenced by LSD and ruled by the politicians of the New Left, communists that hate communists (leaving Stalinism out of it). The changes in Journalism were initiated by a technological development in 1960, the invention of lightweight cameras and cheap tapes with possible hours of recording.
1960- 70s was a period of an Anti-Vietnam war, anti-consumerism, feminism, black power, popular existentialism in philosophy (Zen-Chinese existentialism), in art post-expressionism and drug culture empowered by LSD, Marihuana and heroine (Jazz). As mentioned, leading music of the New Journalism was Jazz considering its spontaneous style and realistic structure as well as Rock (The Beatles) with its glorification of liberty and freedom. In 1968 in Paris student uprisings started taking over.
As New Journalism was mainly literary movement, its main aim is to shift in form of narration from Digetic (telling the story-digesis) to Mimetic (Showing the story-mimis), the style is based rather on seeing than telling. Objectivity is junked in favour of subjective experience theories of subjectivity and truth rather than boring old objective scientific truth having an impact on psychology of the public. “In contrast to a conventional journalistic striving for an 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…” (Ref.2)
Popular were authors like Tom Wolfe with his iconic Radical Chick, written for the New York magazine article starting a trend of interest in a terrorist life and “Mau-Mauing The Flack-Catchers” which shows a community action on poverty featuring black guys with guns. Also Hunter S Thomas with his ultimate piece of GONZO JOURNALISM, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in which “ included everything from ‘bights’ chucky little items, often from police beat (…) to human interest stories’, long and often hideously sentimental accounts of hitherto unknown souls beset by tragedy or unusual hobbies within the sheet’s circulation area…
In any case, feature stories gave a man a certain amount of room in which to write.” Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (ref.1)
Tom Wolfe introduced onomatopoeic writing (longer features with no ‘four Ws rule”) and the triumph of the Feature writing among journalists was known as The Novel, meaning that it was completely outside of the category of the hard news. Also it was believed that the end of WWII in 1945 was down of new golden age of American Novel, like the “Hemingway-Dos Passos-Fitzgerald” era after WWI. Journalists started learning techniques of realism through the progress of The New Journalism.
The third person point of view- gave the reader the feeling of being inside the character’s mind and experiencing the emotional reality of the scenes as he experiences it. “It was there and this is how it effected me”. (Ref.1)
Gonzo Journalism also became the default format for almost all TV journalism as well as any future type of feature writing and magazine work. A non-fiction started becoming a serious artistic form in 1966, the new literary genre ‘non-fiction novel’ and gave The New Journalism a “overwhelming momentum” (Ref.1)
In the world of video and photography as well as poetry Ryszard Kapucinski, was one of the biggest journalists of the era of New Journalism. His piece “A poet of the Frontline” is a perfect example picturing the journalists of the new era.
The movie is based on Ryszard’s childhood memories from when he lived in Poland, in Pinsk during the Nazis invasion. The imprints of the war memories left significant scar. Danger, tragedy and fear will always be the leading emotions of his past memories. Once one experiences war the emotions never end it will always be a part of the present reality even though the memories belong to the past. Tragedy and suffering is part of polish peoples’ legacy, part of their lives, identifying problem for polish people is not enough, because their past thought them that there is no solution. Poetry was for Ryszard a defence against the tragedies he witnessed, he could not deal with his past completely and so he tried to express the trapped sadness in his work. Through art or poetry he could express himself. He believed that the nation would survive everything and beauty would help it to do so. Spiritual world is more important than material strength, thanks to which the nation survived.
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, part IV
1. The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Journalism
