HCJ Seminar: Tom Wolfe-The New Journalism

This weeks reading was "The New Journalism" by Tom Wolfe. Part 1 of this book describes how editors worked in the same miserable conditions as reporters. The reporters had no ambition to move up, and so the editors felt no threat from below.

Wolfe goes on to talk about an unspoken competition between the reporters to get a "scoop" meaning getting the biggest and best story before any of the others. An example of this is Mok, who jumps into the freezing sea, and swims over to a man in a boat in order to get an interview and meet his deadline.

The main idea in this section is that journalism is just a step towards the final triumph of writing a novel-a dream achieved by Portis, who quits his job on a whim, moves into a shack and writes a novel called Norwood, followed by True Grit.

Wolfe then goes on to talk about columnists, and how Breslin made the revolutionary discovery that it was feasible for a columnist to actually leave the building and do reporting on his own. Breslin would go out and cover a story as a reporter, and then write about it in his column.

The book then goes on to explain how most columnists run out of material after 8-10 weeks, and begin writing about people they overhear in the street etc.

The main theme of the book is how journalism changed. Wolfe identified 4 devices that were conventionally used in novels, that he began to use in journalism.

These are:

• Scene-by-scene construction
• Full recorded dialogue
• 3rd person point of view
• Recording gestures, facial expressions, manner, habits, clothing etc

Wolfe claimed "I had the feeling I was doing things no-one had ever done before in journalism, moving beyond the conventional limits of journalism-more ambitious, intense, more detailed."

However, this movement was attacked as impressionistic, as it was extraordinary for a new style to be created via journalism.

Novelists began claiming that their books were not novels, but a new literary genre they had invented so that literary people would take it seriously.

The second part of the book is a collection of examples of this "new journalism".