Facing Up to the Media: Walter Ong and the Embrace of Technology

General photograph of J. Stevens' rides building up, taken J. Stevens' Fair, 20 June 1961 general view. See Leeson's notebook 9, pages 92-95 for notes

The New Journalism and the Struggle for Interpretation

Scholarship in literary journalism often focuses on matters of technique and style, and on the ethical challenges of immersion reporting. In some contexts, however, literary journalism may also take on a sense of moral purpose, as when reporters assert the importance of their interpretations, or readers attribute special meaning to a particular style of writing. The New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s offers a revealing example of how magazine and book publishing markets and writer–editor relations inevitably shape journalists’ interpretations and lend them a sense of social significance. The New Journalism did not stand alone and apart from the larger profession, but took root within a network of writers, editors, and publishers, and grew out of a wider, ongoing debate over the nature of journalists’ interpretive responsibilities