New Journalism, intensely subjective approach to journalistic writing prevalent in the United States during the 1960s and 70s, incorporating stylistic techniques associated with fiction in order to produce a vivid and immediate nonfiction style. During a time marked by political, social, and cultural upheaval, New Journalism's practitioners adopted what they considered to be exciting and appropriate methods of reporting, combining personal impressions and opinions, reconstructing dialogue and slang, and writing from the point of view of their subjects. Writers who used this idiosyncratic style include Tom Wolfe (who coined the term), Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, and, in their nonfiction works, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. Among the magazines most noted for publishing essays in the genre were The New Yorker, Esquire, New York, and Rolling Stone.
See T. Wolfe and E. W. Johnson, ed., The New Journalism (1973); M. Weingarten, The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight (2009).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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