Personal frameworks and subjective truth: New Journalism and the 1972 U.S. presidential election

<p>This thesis examines the reportage of the New Journalists who covered the United States 1972 presidential campaign. Nineteen seventy-two was a key year in the development of New Journalism, marking a peak in output from successful writers, as well as in the critical attention paid to debates about the mode. Nineteen seventy-two was also an important year in the development of campaign journalism, a system which only occurred every four years and had not changed significantly since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. The system was not equipped to deal with the socio-political chaos of the time, or the attempts by Richard Nixon at manipulating how the campaign was covered. New Journalism was a mode founded in part on the idea that old methods of journalism needed to change to meet the needs of contemporary society, and in their coverage of the 1972 campaign the New Journalists were able to apply their arguments for change to their campaign reportage. Thus the convergence of the campaign reportage cycle with the peak of New Journalism’s development represents a key moment in the development of both New Journalism and campaign journalism. I use the campaign reportage of Timothy Crouse in The Boys on the Bus, Norman Mailer in St. George and the Godfather, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, and Gloria Steinem in “Coming of Age with McGovern” as case studies for the role of New Journalism at this moment in literary journalism history. As writers who rejected the mainstream press’s requirement for objectivity, the New Journalists occupied a unique role in the campaign coverage by offering different agendas and more personal frameworks than the mainstream media. I examine the framework of each of these writers’ reportage, and how their secondary agendas shaped their consciously personal narratives of the campaign. These secondary agendas and personal narratives give the New Journalists’ reportage a lasting meaning and cultural significance beyond the initial context of reporting on the campaign, and beyond the victory of Nixon, whom all four of the New Journalists analysed in this thesis opposed. As my examination of Crouse’s, Mailer’s, Thompson’s, and Steinem’s New Journalism about the 1972 campaign establishes, this microcosm represents a key point in the development of New Journalism. The research and analysis in this thesis argues that the field of study devoted to New Journalism needs to re-think some of the ways the mode has been written about. There are assumptions in the critical discourse that have been consistently accepted but which should be questioned further. It is crucial to an in-depth understanding of the mode that New Journalism scholarship reassess some of the ideas that we have become certain about and make sure they actually fit the aims and output of the New Journalists at the time. The importance of understanding the role of personal frameworks and secondary agendas in campaign journalism reaches beyond New Journalism and, as I argue in the conclusion to this thesis, has been demonstrated to be keenly relevant by the role of the press in the 2016 presidential election and the striking similarities between the 1972 and 2016 campaigns.</p>

Personal frameworks and subjective truth: New Journalism and the 1972 U.S. presidential election

<p>This thesis examines the reportage of the New Journalists who covered the United States 1972 presidential campaign. Nineteen seventy-two was a key year in the development of New Journalism, marking a peak in output from successful writers, as well as in the critical attention paid to debates about the mode. Nineteen seventy-two was also an important year in the development of campaign journalism, a system which only occurred every four years and had not changed significantly since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. The system was not equipped to deal with the socio-political chaos of the time, or the attempts by Richard Nixon at manipulating how the campaign was covered. New Journalism was a mode founded in part on the idea that old methods of journalism needed to change to meet the needs of contemporary society, and in their coverage of the 1972 campaign the New Journalists were able to apply their arguments for change to their campaign reportage. Thus the convergence of the campaign reportage cycle with the peak of New Journalism’s development represents a key moment in the development of both New Journalism and campaign journalism. I use the campaign reportage of Timothy Crouse in The Boys on the Bus, Norman Mailer in St. George and the Godfather, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, and Gloria Steinem in “Coming of Age with McGovern” as case studies for the role of New Journalism at this moment in literary journalism history. As writers who rejected the mainstream press’s requirement for objectivity, the New Journalists occupied a unique role in the campaign coverage by offering different agendas and more personal frameworks than the mainstream media. I examine the framework of each of these writers’ reportage, and how their secondary agendas shaped their consciously personal narratives of the campaign. These secondary agendas and personal narratives give the New Journalists’ reportage a lasting meaning and cultural significance beyond the initial context of reporting on the campaign, and beyond the victory of Nixon, whom all four of the New Journalists analysed in this thesis opposed. As my examination of Crouse’s, Mailer’s, Thompson’s, and Steinem’s New Journalism about the 1972 campaign establishes, this microcosm represents a key point in the development of New Journalism. The research and analysis in this thesis argues that the field of study devoted to New Journalism needs to re-think some of the ways the mode has been written about. There are assumptions in the critical discourse that have been consistently accepted but which should be questioned further. It is crucial to an in-depth understanding of the mode that New Journalism scholarship reassess some of the ideas that we have become certain about and make sure they actually fit the aims and output of the New Journalists at the time. The importance of understanding the role of personal frameworks and secondary agendas in campaign journalism reaches beyond New Journalism and, as I argue in the conclusion to this thesis, has been demonstrated to be keenly relevant by the role of the press in the 2016 presidential election and the striking similarities between the 1972 and 2016 campaigns.</p>

Hunter S. Thompson, Transmetropolitan, and the Evolution from Author to Character

<p>This thesis examines American author Hunter S. Thompson, in the context of his own works – primarily Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary– as well as the representation of him as a character in the graphic text Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. The evolution of Thompson from author to character and the development of that character in his own works is examined, as well as how this development allowed for his character to be fully realised in a completely fictional world. In turn, the fully developed use of Thompson’s character is the starting point for my analysis of Transmetropolitan could potentially be read as a work of New Journalism, albeit a fictional one. The first chapter examines how Thompson began writing himself as a character in his early fictional work The Rum Diary. Though largely overlooked by critics because of its long delayed publication and the focus on the more flashy and better known Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary is critical to Thompson’s development of himself as a character in his works in particular, and to his development as an author in general. Though The Rum Diary is ostensibly a purely fictional novel, this chapter examines how the character Paul Kemp is actually largely autobiographical, and how Kemp is an early version of the same character Thompson uses in his later nonfiction. I then analyse the development of that nonfiction version, Raoul Duke, in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As The Rum Diary is not actually purely fictional, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not actually completely nonfictional. Thompson, as this chapter shows, did not believe in the divide between fact and fiction, and he uses the character he develops in Raoul Duke to write about himself while creatively embellishing the truth. I then look at how Thompson wrote himself so strongly into his character that he became inextricably viewed as actually being Raoul Duke, and how that character was in turn viewed and written about. The second chapter examines the legacy of Thompson’s fully formed self-characterisation, as it is picked up by another author and written in the fully fictional context of the graphic novel series Transmetropolitan. I consider how Transmetropolitan’s main character Spider Jerusalem continues Thompson’s self-as-character through his characterisation, behaviour, and language. Furthermore I analyse how, within the world of the series, Spider as a journalist continues Thompson’s legacy as a writer. The third and final chapter examines how Spider’s characterisation as a continuation of Thompson is an important contextual factor for considering Transmetropolitan as a work of New Journalism. I consider the connection to Thompson, the content of Spider’s articles, and the format in which the articles are depicted in the graphic novel</p>

“The journalistic criminal novel” “In Cold Blood” by Truman Garcia Capote in the context of “new journalism” problem

The success of the ‟new journalism” in the United States in the 60s of the last century had an impact on the literary process. Truman Garcia Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” is an attempt to create a new form of fiction and nonfiction novel, which combines the features of nonfiction and journalism. So there is a genre of ‟criminal journalistic novel”. The author is involved in the investigation of a criminal case. The analysis reveals common typological features of a crime novel. Capote's approaches to the text are investigated, which are similar to journalistic professional methods – interview, reportage, essay. A comparison with previously published works was accomplished, which localises this novel in a different epoch at a new artistic level. The study also identifies the points of contacts and variances in the evaluation of the novel in Western and Russian criticism. The article offers conclusions. Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” allows to be focused not only on real criminal events, but also on the moral state of American society in the proposed time frame. The novel differs from the journalistic reportage, there is a special form of a work of art-a journalistic novel-investigation. The synthesis of literature and journalism also proved fruitful for Norman Kingsley Mailer 's nonfiction novels.

BLOGS AS NEW MEANS IN MODERN COMMUNICATION

The information scope of the last decade has been realized in the integration of various ways of communication into interactive information networks. Combining texts, images, symbols and sounds in one system in a global network and providing accessible and inexpensive access, dramatically changes the nature of social communication. The history of journalism has its stages of development: from ancient to modern forms, from signs to modern information technologies. If the previous centuries are properly described and analyzed by the researchers, the new means of communication require more study. The proposed study attempts to analyze blogs as new means in modern communication. Blogging is somewhat different from journalism in its predominant communicative function, which in traditional media is only available live on radio and television, but information is often censored by a moderator, an editor, who determines who to broadcast and when to do it. The study focuses on whether a blog is a form of new journalism or a new journalistic genre that has entered mass communication. The article as an applied aspect considers ten most popular Ukrainian bloggers on Instagram based on the results of the analysis of online publications. It is concluded that the blogs are powerful producers of information and, as a consequence, correlators of network information flows. Blogging and journalism are two types of mass information and communication activities, between which there are common and different, but both types have a moral responsibility for the content. The websites and social networks systematically provide rankings of the most popular blogs. In such cases, the authors, their age, number of subscribers, topics and a short history of the author are shown, and details of the private life of bloggers are usually displayed. It attracts the attention of the consumer of information.