Ted...I must dissent from your opening remarks. If you look back at that golden era, I think you will find that every "new journalist" had a great editor. Without Arnold Gingrich at Esquire, no Tom Wolfe, who famously thought he had flamed-out on his first assignment, sent a letter to Gingrich with notes for another reporter; Gingrich simply lopped off the "Dear Arnold" and ran with it. Fame ensued.
Ditto Clay Felker...ditto (believe it or not) Jann Wenner...with an assist from WaPo's Ben Bradlee, who started "Style," the first autonomous daily newspaper features section. (Which were the first to get the chop when newspapers imploded.)
Some writers came up with these stories on their own--but most were sent scurrying out to satisfy a great editor's boundless curiosity. These same editors on the "soft" side of the news biz often had to defend those writers against the "hard" side, which wanted stories every damned day--you had to "fill" the spaces around the Macy's ads, after all. But great journalism, "new" or otherwise, takes time and an expense account.
(The author of this piece confesses a conflict of interest since he edited feature sections at several once-profitable American newspapers.)
"{G}reat journalism, "new" or otherwise, takes time and an expense account." So true, which probably plays a major part in the lack great - or much in-depth - journalism now.
Here's a toast to Great Editors! When I was younger, under the influence of A. Scott Berg's biography, I wanted to 'grow up to be Maxwell Perkins.' Sadly, the closest I got was a short period of time when I always wore my hat indoors.
At every level. When I found out B2B journalism paid an adult wage (compared to newspapers, dying by the 90s), my gig was to come up with a couple of features per month, and don't drink too much on the expense account. Now I'm supposed to train Gen Z not to rely too much on reporting via social media and AI--but to encourage them to report via social media and AI.
Yes. B2B pays an adult salary, has adult hours, a generous word count, and (in auto industry) decent press trips. And, I cut my j-teeth under an EIC who cared about the integrity of our “book”, so he cared about his writers too.
At the risk of dating myself, I was a wayward youth from the hinterlands who found himself at a certain West Coast school in the 70s because I could take tests and throw a baseball with my left hand. My RA took me to an off-campus dinner party gathering of her upperclassmen (and upper class) friends. I knew which fork to use because my countryfied mother insisted throughout my life that manners would pay off, but then we played charades. The card I drew was Fear and Loathing. I'd never heard of HST--he wasn't on my Texarkana public school reading list (I can, however, still recite the prologue to Canterbury Tales in Middle English). The first time I was embarassed by my ignorance. My fastball didn't mean much inthe PAC-10 either.
Actual reporters have been replaced by people holding an elite university Masters Degree in Journalism...no connection to the real world and boring AF.
Not "New Journalism", but there is a very good show on HBO (Tokyo Vice) based on the story of Jake Adelstein. He was the first (and I believe the only) foreign journalist to work for the largest newspaper in Japan, and he went deep into the Yakuza and Japanese politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The story is very interesting and the show very well done.
During 3rd year undergrad exams in spring 1970 I began reading Electric…..Cuckoo’s Nest was tied for my favourite book with Pride & Prejudice. As I read Electric I became obsessed with searching for a picture of Kesey. Reading your bang on list I am back in the magazine stacks of the McGill library spending hours going through old Lifes & Times searching.
Bless the New Journalism and The Honest Broker who guarantees such wonderful rides through open doors. And now to my locker to try to dig up those books. Thx
This is outstanding,Ted. After I read one of Janet Malcolm‘s book’s years ago , I wrote her a note. I have her response letter somewhere: she was very understanding. (I had covered a murder trial that left me quite unsettled.) My Dad was friends with Joe DiMaggio. I have shocked many on LinkedIn by posting their photo together. I have his autograph, so does my nephew (and a signed baseball). He was a notorious cheapskate. I could go on and on here! You have done a great service!
Great list. I quibble a bit about including anything by Mailer as journalist (as novelist, a different story) and I think you love Didion a bit too much maybe. Your article reminded me of some old favorites that deserve rereading, thank you.
I am a bit disappointed at not finding anything by John McPhee on the list. I know he lacks the flamboyance of most of the authors on the list but it has always been my impression that his work had a real influence on many of the other new journalists. And I’m not sure that any of the others on the list crafted works of any higher quality than McPhee. Even Tom Wolfe would have had trouble making the geology of North America as readable as McPhee.
I agree. I'm a great fan of John McPhee! I love his long long detailed stories about oranges and Alaska and just about anything. And he's not addled like Hunter Thompson or Truman Capote (in a different way) or an obnoxious MCPig like Mailer or given to bombast, hyperbole, parody, and excessive exclamation marks!!! like Tom Wolfe.
My big complaint about the New Journalism is that it buries the lede. It had a big influence on mainstream journalism and not always for the better. Articles are now long shaggy dog stories saying little for paragraph after paragraph. They meander talking background and reactions. Only in the latter paragraphs does one find the point of the article. What happened to what-when-who-where-why-how?
If you compare modern news articles with pre-New Journalism articles, they are tedious and uninformative. There was a prime example of this going around the web maybe 20 years ago with an article about some random guy in Dallas going through his ordinary routine ... blah blah blah, and you find out that Kennedy was shot in the last sentence. I think a return to a more classic newsy style might be an improvement. There's a lot of stuff going on out there.
I'm not sure if this could be done with modern metrics of engagement. You can read "Pearl Harbor bombed" in just a few seconds. It might not even count as a "read", so you might not get paid. You can imagine the modern click-bait version full of New Journalism padding.
P.S. It was hard to read this without thinking of Luigi Barzini Sr. who lightened up journalism in Italy. He wrote a fun account of his automobile trip across Russia, some of it on the tracks of the Trans-Siberian railroad. His son was a journalist as well, and his "As For Italy" justifiably controversial.
This is really timely for me! Part of a writing course I'll be running from Tuesday 14th January focuses on New Journalism, and several of the works you mention are scheduled to be discussed. I'll put a link to this in my reading list.
New Journalism gave voice and space to literary and journalistic voices that never agreed with the mainstream world. It's far harder for such eccentric writers to gain similar exposure today.
Not sure I agree. Several sports writers in the UK have a NJ style of writing. I wonder if, over the last 50 years or so, it has become embedded rather than an add-on.
Tony Horwitz's books belong here. They are all vaguely 'New Journalism' — although some of them are not 'reporting' in the sense of current events, as, for example, in 'A Voyage Long and Strange' he retraces the steps of the earliest European explorers of North America. But Horwitz, who was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his Wall Street Journal series on working conditions in low-wage America, and had covered wars in the Middle East from the front lines, certainly knew how to do straight 'reporting.' I love all of his books, but my favorite might be his (unfortunately obscure) 'Boom,' about the tar sands of Canada and the 'XL' pipeline. It is deeply immersive, in the manner of Capote's "In Cold Blood," and by turns eye-opening, compassionate, funny as hell, and make-your-blood-boil-ing. Horwitz, who left us much too soon, was kind of the anti-Mailer. Self-effacing, down-to-earth, just trying to figure things out and tell stories that people would pay to read.
Ted...I must dissent from your opening remarks. If you look back at that golden era, I think you will find that every "new journalist" had a great editor. Without Arnold Gingrich at Esquire, no Tom Wolfe, who famously thought he had flamed-out on his first assignment, sent a letter to Gingrich with notes for another reporter; Gingrich simply lopped off the "Dear Arnold" and ran with it. Fame ensued.
Ditto Clay Felker...ditto (believe it or not) Jann Wenner...with an assist from WaPo's Ben Bradlee, who started "Style," the first autonomous daily newspaper features section. (Which were the first to get the chop when newspapers imploded.)
Some writers came up with these stories on their own--but most were sent scurrying out to satisfy a great editor's boundless curiosity. These same editors on the "soft" side of the news biz often had to defend those writers against the "hard" side, which wanted stories every damned day--you had to "fill" the spaces around the Macy's ads, after all. But great journalism, "new" or otherwise, takes time and an expense account.
(The author of this piece confesses a conflict of interest since he edited feature sections at several once-profitable American newspapers.)
"{G}reat journalism, "new" or otherwise, takes time and an expense account." So true, which probably plays a major part in the lack great - or much in-depth - journalism now.
Here's a toast to Great Editors! When I was younger, under the influence of A. Scott Berg's biography, I wanted to 'grow up to be Maxwell Perkins.' Sadly, the closest I got was a short period of time when I always wore my hat indoors.
At every level. When I found out B2B journalism paid an adult wage (compared to newspapers, dying by the 90s), my gig was to come up with a couple of features per month, and don't drink too much on the expense account. Now I'm supposed to train Gen Z not to rely too much on reporting via social media and AI--but to encourage them to report via social media and AI.
Yes. B2B pays an adult salary, has adult hours, a generous word count, and (in auto industry) decent press trips. And, I cut my j-teeth under an EIC who cared about the integrity of our “book”, so he cared about his writers too.
At the risk of dating myself, I was a wayward youth from the hinterlands who found himself at a certain West Coast school in the 70s because I could take tests and throw a baseball with my left hand. My RA took me to an off-campus dinner party gathering of her upperclassmen (and upper class) friends. I knew which fork to use because my countryfied mother insisted throughout my life that manners would pay off, but then we played charades. The card I drew was Fear and Loathing. I'd never heard of HST--he wasn't on my Texarkana public school reading list (I can, however, still recite the prologue to Canterbury Tales in Middle English). The first time I was embarassed by my ignorance. My fastball didn't mean much inthe PAC-10 either.
Actual reporters have been replaced by people holding an elite university Masters Degree in Journalism...no connection to the real world and boring AF.
Not "New Journalism", but there is a very good show on HBO (Tokyo Vice) based on the story of Jake Adelstein. He was the first (and I believe the only) foreign journalist to work for the largest newspaper in Japan, and he went deep into the Yakuza and Japanese politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The story is very interesting and the show very well done.
During 3rd year undergrad exams in spring 1970 I began reading Electric…..Cuckoo’s Nest was tied for my favourite book with Pride & Prejudice. As I read Electric I became obsessed with searching for a picture of Kesey. Reading your bang on list I am back in the magazine stacks of the McGill library spending hours going through old Lifes & Times searching.
Bless the New Journalism and The Honest Broker who guarantees such wonderful rides through open doors. And now to my locker to try to dig up those books. Thx
I'm reading a book of interviews with Kesey right now and developing an intellectual crush on the way his mind works.
I just finished rereading Cuckoo and will do the same thing with Great Notion.
Kesey was a genius.
or at the least an unusually eloquent visionary, which might be close to the same thing.
This is outstanding,Ted. After I read one of Janet Malcolm‘s book’s years ago , I wrote her a note. I have her response letter somewhere: she was very understanding. (I had covered a murder trial that left me quite unsettled.) My Dad was friends with Joe DiMaggio. I have shocked many on LinkedIn by posting their photo together. I have his autograph, so does my nephew (and a signed baseball). He was a notorious cheapskate. I could go on and on here! You have done a great service!
You need to include Michael Herr's Dispatches.
A recent one that I really liked was 'A teen's fatal plunge into london underworld' by Patrick Raden Keefe
Great list. I quibble a bit about including anything by Mailer as journalist (as novelist, a different story) and I think you love Didion a bit too much maybe. Your article reminded me of some old favorites that deserve rereading, thank you.
I am a bit disappointed at not finding anything by John McPhee on the list. I know he lacks the flamboyance of most of the authors on the list but it has always been my impression that his work had a real influence on many of the other new journalists. And I’m not sure that any of the others on the list crafted works of any higher quality than McPhee. Even Tom Wolfe would have had trouble making the geology of North America as readable as McPhee.
Another vote to add John McPhee. 👍
I agree. I'm a great fan of John McPhee! I love his long long detailed stories about oranges and Alaska and just about anything. And he's not addled like Hunter Thompson or Truman Capote (in a different way) or an obnoxious MCPig like Mailer or given to bombast, hyperbole, parody, and excessive exclamation marks!!! like Tom Wolfe.
He wasn’t New Journalism but how could you not mention I.F. Stone? He makes most of your list read like juvenilia.
My big complaint about the New Journalism is that it buries the lede. It had a big influence on mainstream journalism and not always for the better. Articles are now long shaggy dog stories saying little for paragraph after paragraph. They meander talking background and reactions. Only in the latter paragraphs does one find the point of the article. What happened to what-when-who-where-why-how?
If you compare modern news articles with pre-New Journalism articles, they are tedious and uninformative. There was a prime example of this going around the web maybe 20 years ago with an article about some random guy in Dallas going through his ordinary routine ... blah blah blah, and you find out that Kennedy was shot in the last sentence. I think a return to a more classic newsy style might be an improvement. There's a lot of stuff going on out there.
I'm not sure if this could be done with modern metrics of engagement. You can read "Pearl Harbor bombed" in just a few seconds. It might not even count as a "read", so you might not get paid. You can imagine the modern click-bait version full of New Journalism padding.
P.S. It was hard to read this without thinking of Luigi Barzini Sr. who lightened up journalism in Italy. He wrote a fun account of his automobile trip across Russia, some of it on the tracks of the Trans-Siberian railroad. His son was a journalist as well, and his "As For Italy" justifiably controversial.
I feel like there aren’t any indifferent Norman Mailer readers. You either see his stuff as incredible page turners or you feel contempt for the guy.
I’m in the first camp. The Deer Park and The Naked and the Dead are bizarre and wonderful.
This is really timely for me! Part of a writing course I'll be running from Tuesday 14th January focuses on New Journalism, and several of the works you mention are scheduled to be discussed. I'll put a link to this in my reading list.
New Journalism gave voice and space to literary and journalistic voices that never agreed with the mainstream world. It's far harder for such eccentric writers to gain similar exposure today.
Not sure I agree. Several sports writers in the UK have a NJ style of writing. I wonder if, over the last 50 years or so, it has become embedded rather than an add-on.
I would also like to get some names. Thank you 🙏
The best one was Hugh McIllvanney
Pls name Brit sports writers if it’s football. Only following since 2014 and surprised some times it’s literature. Thx
The best one was Hugh McIllvanney
I’ve just re-read “Dispatches” by Michael Herr. It belongs on this list.
Tony Horwitz's books belong here. They are all vaguely 'New Journalism' — although some of them are not 'reporting' in the sense of current events, as, for example, in 'A Voyage Long and Strange' he retraces the steps of the earliest European explorers of North America. But Horwitz, who was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his Wall Street Journal series on working conditions in low-wage America, and had covered wars in the Middle East from the front lines, certainly knew how to do straight 'reporting.' I love all of his books, but my favorite might be his (unfortunately obscure) 'Boom,' about the tar sands of Canada and the 'XL' pipeline. It is deeply immersive, in the manner of Capote's "In Cold Blood," and by turns eye-opening, compassionate, funny as hell, and make-your-blood-boil-ing. Horwitz, who left us much too soon, was kind of the anti-Mailer. Self-effacing, down-to-earth, just trying to figure things out and tell stories that people would pay to read.