The trouble with new journalism, in my opinion, is that it goes against everything that we have learnt so far as to how to be a journalist. New journalism is long, incredibly self-indulgent and takes the reader on a long and winding novelistic journey. However, i have a lot of admiration for new journalists, as it takes a huge amount of effort and dedication to achieve successfully.
When we studied ‘In Cold Blood’ in Writing for the World, it was deemed a non-fiction novel. The trouble with that particular book though, was based on how much of the journalism we could actually trust as fact, because it all came from one primary source, Truman Capote.
I’m too tired now to keep warbling on about this, more later when i can be chuffed!
Advertisement
March 27, 2008 at 1:12 pm
New Journalism is not a contradiction of traditional ‘objective’ (ie balanced) news reporting, where the reporter keeps themselves out of it. It is simply a different generic style. Saying that New Journalism goes against Proper Journalism is like saying Jazz goes against Classical Music. As a professional musician you might prefer one rather than the other, but you would need to know how to do both and understand what the differences are.
Can you update this blog and maybe have another go with the camera. Borrow a decent camera from the stores and just take hundreds of off beat pictures around the campus and around Winchester. I need pictures like that for WINOL and for another project I am working on.
April 28, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Anything to add on New Journalism after the discussion today?