They were two parvenues of “provinces” (Virginia and New Jersey) that made New York the homeland of a fashion that still endures, but is now an old cliché: New Journalism.
Journalism as factual as it is fictional that always had many fathers. Some say that it was invented by French realist writers of the 19th century and others by the New York Herald school and magazines such as Esquire, New York or Rolling Stone.
There are those who consider that reports like “Do you sleep naked?” or “Frank Sinatra is constipated” continue to be the quintessence of this genre always accused of inventing dialogues and recreating scenes that never existed. However, defenders and detractors agree on one thing: he was a powerful revulsion to the old aseptic and insipid journalism, lacking salt and pepper.
Today it is already an accepted tool. Its more or less rigorous practice no longer arouses the controversies or suspicions of yesteryear. Faced with the purism of “recorded journalism” (only what is recorded exists), writers and audiences prefer that unique sensation of being close witnesses of the protagonists of journalistic stories that, as Tom Wolfe himself said, required “more reporting than ever.” ”.
This type of chroniclers needed time that was not possible in newspapers, which is why New Journalism became popular in magazines and Sunday supplements. Means that gave more time than money, and that is why quality depended on a balance between fees, trips, hotels and weeks of work. New Journalism was and continues to be an expensive and scarce luxury.
Only The New Yorker had and has a reputation for paying generously in time and money, even rewarding pieces that were finally rejected. In the paranoid Ross’s magazine (“these people are going to ruin me”) New Journalism was always considered Old Journalism, although his editing team never tolerated statements and facts that could not be proven by at least two different sources. And yet they ended up publishing more or less false stories.
Only a few of these journalists became rich and famous, and media outlets capable of financing large expense accounts on long-term projects were always scarce. Of all of them, Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese would be the great dizos and rivals, although from The New Yorker James Mitchel and Joe Liebling continued to be the priests of that Old Journalism that was capable of generating monographic editions of the magazine such as the exceptional coverage of John Hersey not about the bombing of Hiroshima, but about its victims.
William Shaw, editor of The New Yorker, was the one who chose that approach (victims, not bombs); He thought of a series of four chapters, but decided to publish them all together in August 1946. A text that ended up being a book that, for many and rightly so, is the best journalistic report of all time.
The omnipresence of The New Yorker led Tom Wolfe to publish a vitriolic “reckoning” in which he ridiculed the magazine founded by Harold Ross, then directed by William Shaw, as a decadent “mummy” editorial team. The portrait was as unfair as it was predictable because more than ink it exuded envy and bile. An example of the same “wild prose” that he had previously used to ridicule another totem magazine, Henry Luce’s weekly Time.
In its obituary for Tom Wolfe, The New York Times said that “he was celebrated as much for his satire as for his clothing. His figure stood out as he walked down Madison Avenue: he was a tall, slender, blue-eyed, still childish-looking man who usually wore impeccable three-piece tailored suits, striped silk shirts with starched white high collars, bright handkerchiefs peeking out of his breast pocket, old pocket watches, and white shoes. Once asked to describe his attire, Wolfe responded, “Neopretentious.” Clothing that he defined as “a harmless form of aggression.”
Gay Talese is, at the moment, the last survivor of that New Journalism, but the fiasco of The Voyeur’s Motel, a story in which he was deceived by its protagonist, left him very touched. He is now reborn and has just published Bartleby
And the superb reports and books by Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese should be required reading in all Journalism Schools. Especially today when the immediacy and culture of Tik-Tok are the opposite of this old and always new way of telling stories that “disturb, excite and make you think.”
