INTRODUCTION
New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included works by himself, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Robert Christgau, Gay Talese and others.
Articles in the New Journalism style tended not to be found in newspapers, but rather in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, CoEvolution Quarterly, Esquire, New York, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and for a short while in the early 1970s, Scanlan's Monthly.
Various people and tendencies throughout the history of American journalism have been labeled "new journalism". Robert E. Park, for instance, in his Natural History of the Newspaper, referred to the advent of the penny press in the 1830s as "new journalism". Likewise, the appearance of the yellow press—papers such as Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in the 1880s—led journalists and historians to proclaim that a "New Journalism" had been created. Ault and Emery, for instance, said "Industrialization and urbanization changed the face of America during the latter half of the Nineteenth century, and its newspapers entered an era known as that of the 'New Journalism.'" John Hohenberg, in The Professional Journalist (1960), called the interpretive reporting which developed after World War II a "new journalism which not only seeks to explain as well as to inform; it even dares to teach, to measure, to evaluate."
During the sixties and seventies, the term enjoyed widespread popularity, often with meanings bearing manifestly little or no connection with one another. Although James E. Murphy noted that "...most uses of the term seem to refer to something more specific than vague new directions in journalism", Curtis D. MacDougal devoted the preface of the sixth edition of his Interpretative Reporting to New Journalism and cataloged many of the contemporary definitions: "Activist, advocacy, participatory, tell-it-as-you-see-it, sensitivity, investigative, saturation, humanistic, reformist and a few more."
The Magic Writing Machine—Student Probes of the New Journalism, a collection edited and introduced by Everette E. Dennis, came up with six categories, labelled new nonfiction (reportage), alternative journalism ("modern muckraking"), advocacy journalism, underground journalism and precision journalism. Michael Johnson's The New Journalism addresses itself to three phenomena: the underground press, the artists of nonfiction, and changes in the established media.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LITERARY APPRECIATION WRITING AND NEW JOURNALISM
New Journalism is usually writing short, factual articles about everyday events. Literary Appreciation Writing is when you create a fictitious event, or twist things that really happened into something that didn't. Literary Appreciation Writing can also be about real events that usually have historical significance, and the story is longer than what would be told in a journalized piece.
Journalism that is characterized by the reporter's subjective interpretations and often features fictional dramatized elements to emphasize personal involvement.
(Communication Arts / Journalism & Publishing) a style of journalism originating in the US in the 1960s, which uses techniques, borrowed from fiction to portray a situation or event as vividly as possible.
Journalism containing the writer's personal opinions and reactions and often fictional asides as added color.
New Journalism was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Combining the techniques of fiction writing with the fact-based approach of reporting, the writing that sprang from this movement demonstrated an aspiration to literary excellence in journalism. The term was crystallized by Tom Wolfe in his 1973 book, The New Journalism, a collection of essays and excerpts describing and demonstrating the new style.
Ogenlewe (2006) posits that ‘literary appreciation writing refers to the evaluation of works of imaginative literature as an intellectual or academic exercise.’ In this process the writer interprets, evaluates or classifies a literary work with a view to determining the artistic merits or demerits or such a work. Donelson and Nilsen (2009) echo this sentiment and add that it is the process by which one ‘gauges one’s interpretive response as a reader to a literary work’. This means that the writer of a literary piece is able to gain pleasure and understanding for the literature, understand its value and importance and admire its complexity.
Literary appreciation writing focuses on the adequate grasp of the definitions and applications of traditional literary devices such as plot, character, metaphor, setting and symbolism which may be encountered within texts.
Writers commonly cited as exemplifying the New Journalism movement have included Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer. Not all of these authors embraced the New Journalism designation; notably, Capote resisted being labeled a journalist and preferred to call his book In Cold Blood a nonfiction novel. Rather than publishing their work in newspapers, pieces by these writers often appeared in magazines. Some of the publications at the vanguard of New Journalism were The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s, Esquire and Rolling Stone.
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