PROPOSAL FOR MEDILL SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM SERIES: VISIONS OF THE AMERICAN PRESS I. Title: TheNew Journalism:The Unexpected Triumph of theLong-Form Narrative II. Author (name and contact info) John Pauly SaintLouis University Depaftmentof Communication 3733W. Pine Xavier300 St.Louis, MO 63108 Offi ce phone: 3 14-971-3192 Fax:314-977 -3195 E-mail:pauly @ slu.edu Home: 7651Carswold Drive St.Louis, MO 63105 31.4-725-4327 III. GeneralDescription of the Work TheNew Journalismwas born in controversy.Tom Wolfe's first manifestoon its behalfwas written in retrospectin 1970,after almosta decadeof work by talentednonfiction writers suchas JoanDidion, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson,and Michael Herr. The original inspirationfor Wolfe's defensemay havebeen an insult by the writer Dwight MacDonald. ReviewingWolfe's 1965book The Kandy-KoloredTangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, "parajournalism"-an MacDonaldlabeled the new style unreliablebastard form, full of cheaptrickery, the product of a veritablewriting machine.A year later RenataAdler skeweredWolfe forhis savagelyirreverent satire of the New Yorker,which spokeof the "tiny mummies" who hauntedthe magazine'shallowed coridors. A decadelater, cloaking himself in the authority of the past,John Hersey would condemnany contemporaryjournalist who blurredthe line dividing fact and fiction. Hersey(who himself had usedcomposite charactersin his World War II reporling)declared that the legendon thejournalist's license "None simplyread, of this was madeup." Newspaperreporters and editors,for their paft, often complainedthat the New Journalism violatedlong-held principles. They expressedoutrage over its apparentindifference to the profession',.unon. of objectivity.Even worse, Wolfe-ever the lightningrod for such controversies-proposedto reversethe moral polaritiesof the craft. What newspaper journalistsrevered-the seriouswork of political reporting-Wolfe mocked as dull, self- lmportant,and out of touch with the times.What newspaperjournalists had neglectedand trivialized-the featurestory-Wolfe glorified as the highestform of reporling. Even now, decadeslater, editorialistscontinue to referencethe New Journalismas a parable aboutwhat becomesof reporterswho abandontheir faith in objectivity. For example,some commentatorson the JaysonBlair controversyatthe New York Timeshave cited the New Journalismas a familiarexample ofjournalists losing their bearings.Nor havefriends of the form doneit a greatservice. Academic critics haveoften collapsedthe work of writers like Wolfe, Didion, and Mailer into a more polite tale aboutthe grandtradition of literary journalism.What such accountsmiss is the historicalspecificity of the New Journalism Lxperiment-how socialtrends, market forces, and writerly ambitionsconverged in the 19k0s,and how the New Journalismemerged from that moment as a sensibilitythat would. overthree decades, subtly fold itself into Americans'discourse about journalism, politics. business,and culture. I want to tell this story aboutthe legacyof the New Journalism.I will arguethat we should understandthe New Journalismas somethingmore than the literary inventionsof gifted individual writers, and more than an idiosyncraticchapter in the largerhistory of literary journalism.The New Journalismemerged during the 1960sand 1970sas a culturalpractice enabledand constrained by socialtrends, market forces, changes in publishingvenues- and debatesover professional values. Though I will pay closeattention to writers' namative strategies,I am particularlyinterested in how the changingmarket for magazineand book- lengthnonfiction createda home for New Journalism,and how the socialturmoil of that era madeits narrativesintellectually plausible and emotionallycompelling, for both writers and readers.Journalistic style came to signiff a largerpolitics of revolution. My openingchapters show how a wide rangeof groupscame to considerthe New Journalism a site-of,y-boli. conflict, a placewhere they might usefully gatherto debatethe meaningof their historicalmoment, and the role thatjournalists ought to play as professionalinterpreters of that moment.The middle chapterstrace the effectsof the New Journalismthrough the 1980sand 1990s,showing how it subtlyinfluenced Americans' practices of social commentary,business reporting, journalism criticism, and ethnography'The final chapters in describethe ways in whiih the New Journalismhas been remembered and memorialized conclusion the work of literarytheorists, journalists, media historians, and socialcritics. My refusesthe now obvious g.n.ulogy, which positionsthe New Journalismas a stylistic more inventionwithin a longeitradition of literaryjournalism, in order to reclaim a denser, 1960sand historicallyparticular Interpretation of the movement.I want to reinterpretthe a tipping 1970sas a crucial-o-"niin the largerhistory of thejournalism profession, and pointin the discourseof the societyit chronicled' talentedwriters often An importanttheme of my book is that the literary accomplishmentsof attendingto grow out of specificsocial, political, and economiccircumstances. By carefully bringing works of suchcontexts, we come to appreciatethe role that contingencyplays in nonfiction greatartistry into existence.For example,Esquire's sponsorship of provocative was inspiredby unforeseennecessity (heavy competition from Playboy),individual genius (the deft editorialhand of Harold Hayes),wider socialchanges (the emergenceof an educated,leisured mass audience), and political unrest (a profusionof socialcontroversies orr 's whichto report).Esquire sponsorshipof long magazinearlicles, in turn, helpedNew Journalistslike Wolfe. Mailer, Herr, John Sack,and Gay Talesewin contractsfor nonfiction books.changing the careerpaths that journalists might imaginefor themselves. Archival recordsplay a crucial role in my study.Only Carol Polsgrove'sbook on Esquirein the 1960shas made significantuse of thesematerials thus far. The Esquirerecords, for example,demonstrate that Arnold Gingrich,the publisher,and Harold Hayes,the editor, worked closelywith the advertisingand salesstaff, coordinatingissue themes, covers, public speeches.and editorial decisions. The files documentthe magazine'spractices of paying authorsand of solicitingand killing, fact-checking,and editing manuscripts. Letters to the editor documentreader responses to the New Journalism,including thoseof a surprisingly largenumber of womenreaders. The Gingrichcollection includes dozens of speechesgiven to advertisingclubs and universities. I alsoplan to usethe Harold Hayescollection at Wake ForestUniversity; the contemporarywriters' collectionat BostonUniversity, which includes the papersof GeorgeGoodman, John Sack,David Halberstam,and others;the l/ew Yorker collectionat the New York PublicLibrary; and journalism school archives at the University of Missouriand the Universitvof Illinois. IV. Work's Central Argument A.25-Word Version: The New Journalismrepresents more than a seriesof individual literary inventions.It symbolizeddramatic changes in readers'mores, authors' career paths, andmagazineand bookmarkets. 8.250-World Version: Most commentatorsuse the term New Journalismto refer to the long-form magazine narrativesbeing createdin the 1960sby writers suchas Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Gay Talese,Joan Didion, MichaelHerr, andHunter Thompson. More recently,critics have treatedthe New Journalismas an early versionof what they now call literaryjournalism or creativenonfiction. Their approachto the New Journalismtypically emphasizesthe literary inventivenessof the form's individual practitioners. I proposea more deeply socialaccount of the origins and meaningof the New Journalism. My uc.ount will attendclosely to changesin the educationand sensibilitiesof middle-class readers,magazines' efforts to marketthe socialtumult of the 1960s,crises in newspaper journalists'ionception of theirprofession, the emergenceof friendlyvenues in New York. Rolling Stone,and Esquire, widening opportunitiesin the nonfiction book market.the alternativecareer paths being opened to journalists,and the reformistambitions ofjournalism schoolgraduates. These were the socialconditions that madethe narrativeinventions of the New Journalismolausible and marketable. I alsowant to assessthe legacyof the New Journalism.My book will tracethe New Journalism'sinfluence not just on our narrativeforms, but also on our practicesof business journalism,social criticism, ethnography, and media criticism. I concludethat the New Journalismsignified a new momentin the history of Americanjournalism, and that it continuesto shapethe forms of public discoursethat journalists have committedthemselves to guard. V. Table of Contents My book will containnine chapters,The early chaptersfocus on how the New Journalism was understoodin its own era; the middle chaptersexplore the ways in which New Journalismsensibilities inflected American social commentary, business reporting, media criticism,and ethnography in the 1980sand 1990s.The final chaptersconsider the waysin which the New Journalismcontinues to be rememberedand memonalized,and its impact on the practiceofjournalism in the United States. The New Journalism as Discourse Chapter 1. The New Journalismas a Signof the Times Analyzesthe reasonswhy the New Journalismcame to be identified,disputed, and defended as a new form of writing and an icon of socialchange. Uses popular press and alternative presscoverage. writings of and interviewswith practitioners,and early scholarlydiscussions of New Journalismas a literary form. Theme:even when the discourseabout