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From The Connecticut Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Spring, 1996, pp. 59-69.

Literary Journalism: Newspapers' Last, Best Hope

Paul Many University of Toledo Toledo, OH 43606 Office:(419)530-2005 Home:(419)536-3413 pmany@uoft02.utoledo.edu

IN MANY NEWSROOMS ACROSS AMERICA, literary journalism has a bad name. To shake the notoriety, it often goes by one of its aliases (Pause here for a deep breath): art journalism, essay fiction, factual fiction, the literature of fact, faction, journalit, saturation reporting, advocacy journalism, participatory journalism, personal journalism, parajournalism, point-of-view journalism, documentary narrative, dramatic nonfiction, underground journalism, speculative journalism, the new nonfiction, the nonfiction novel, cultural journalism, creative nonfiction (a lately popular one), The New Journalism. Whatever you call it, for many newspaper editors it has the same off-odor of spoiled roses. Merely mentioning it to them risks you looks of pure confusion, grunts of outright dismissal, or cries of condemnation that it is the latest and best corruption of culture since MTV. "'Literary journalism?' Isn't that an oxymoron?" "Wasn't all that discredited when Janet Cooke made up that stuff about the 12-year-old addict and had to give back the Pulitzer?" "Tom Wolfe, the guy who wrote about the me decade? Wasn't his writing as mannered as his white suits?" "Didn't Janet Malcolm get into hot water by fooling around with that psychiatrist's quotes?" Yes. All this and more. And in an earlier day, newspapers could do without the nettlesome problems it can cause. But that was long before the Commission on Freedom of the Press--a privately-financed group composed mainly of social scientists--summed up the post WWII ethos of the press in these words: It is no

-2longer enough to report the fact truthfully. It is now necessary to report the truth about the fact. (Siebert, et al, 1963, p. 88. Emphasis in original.) Since that time, not only have newspapers needed a more literary journalism for their very survival, but it has become their last, best hope. First, a Definition Of the terms listed above, "Literary journalism" is emerging in the critical literature as common for this form. Here it is defined as: a form of referential writing that uses literary techniques. A definition like this may be too narrow and circular for many scholars, but it can serve as a coarse sieve to sort examples of the genre from most of the stories found on the front pages of newspapers. Referential writing is usually found in scientific articles, business reports and in so-called "spot" or breaking front-page news. (See Kinneavy, 1971) This kind of discourse attempts to focus on the world "out there," is generally denotative and abstract, and gives the text short shrift: Two people were killed and four injured this morning in a fire which caused $30,000 damage to a West End house. By contrast, Literary writing, found in essays, poems and the pages of novels, more often focuses its energy on massaging the text, and is more subjective, connotative and concrete: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. (Joyce, 1934) Literary journalism focuses on the exterior world in the same referential way that garden variety journalism does. But in doing so, it uses literary techniques that, by their very nature, beg for the inclusion of a wider sort of reality. The usual language and, with it, the content of journalism, thus becomes stretched past what newspaper editors would normally consider "factual" or "objective." And this may be the source of its acceptance problems. Objectivity and the News Traditionally, if the referential journalist dared to bite the literary apple, she was cast out of the newsroom, with the editor brandishing the flaming sword of objectivity to make sure she stayed out. No first year philosophy student, however, would get away with using the term "objectivity." The word presumes what most philosophers would dismiss as a correspondence theory of reality. Such theories make the claim of a one-to-one relationship between things out there and the meaning of the words we use for them.

-3Correspondence theories are all too easily refuted by asking: To whom or where should we go to find out the exact nature of this supposed, separate objective world? After all, the only way that we know the world outside of our own heads--that anyone knows it, for that matter--is through our own blighted perceptions of taste, touch, sight, smell and hearing. Here it arrives hardly pristine, much filtered and shaped by nature and nurture. (See Merrill, et al, 1983) Even the toughest show-me physicist these days believes that reality is altered by the process of perceiving it; and dont even bother asking linguists. There are reasons tightly bound up in the history of the business and the profession of journalism, however, as to why journalists continue to use this naive concept.

Traditionally, if the referential journalist dared to bite the literary apple, she was cast out of the newsroom, with the editor brandishing the flaming sword of objectivity to make sure she stayed out.
In the mid-1800's newspapers began to move from an elite to a mass audience. The reason for this was a not very surprising marketing discovery: Publishers found that if the newspaper was dropped in price--sometimes to as low as a penny--many more people would read it. The cost of producing more newspapers had to be borne by someone, however, and publishers of this "Penny Press" were betting that advertisers would be ready to step up to the counter. They were to win their bet, since railroads, the telegraph, steam-powered machinery, and the new concentration of people in cities, allowed advertisers to take full advantage of mass production techniques. These same innovations made mass marketing of newspapers possible, and the two worked hand in glove. In effect, newspapers and advertisers each had a product the other needed. Newspapers sold the advertisers a mass audience, and advertisers bought space to sell this audience whalebone corsets, harrows, beaver hats and whole catalogs of other consumer goods. To keep this mass audience reading, however, newspapers had to radically change their content. Up to that time it was the more highly literate and well-todo members of the community who subscribed to the paper. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, merchants and the like, wanted the shipping news and other national and international events that affected their commerce, and newspapers obliged by providing this content. If the mechanic and the man of labor (See Mencher, P. 48) were also going to be induced to read newspapers, however, these publications would have to find a more culturally neutral ground on which to spread their picnic blankets. That ground became the use of publicly verifiable facts which, at first often

-4involved sensational content. "If it bleeds, it leads," now the motto of many local TV news shows, was first realized in these early penny papers. There was an additional benefit to publishers: These "objective facts," stripped of a writer's quirkiness, were the best of interchangeable parts. Such stripped-down factoids in a standardized story format could be popped from one page and fit into another. They could be bought, sold, traded, and clipped to size by assembly line workers with such titles as legmen, rewrite men, slotmen, copy boys, editors, printers and proofers. The move to these narrowly-defined facts, also fit the need of the infant profession of journalism at the end of the 19th century for a creed to distinguish itself from the more "literary" professions of essayist, poet or storyteller. Journalists caught up in the then-new science of realism, punched their time cards on this objective clock, gradually moving away from the more sensational content. Like other standards, it was initially often more honored by its absence. But as the century turned, and the profession grew in strength, this standard gradually came to dominate. The Problems with Objectivity As much as "objectivity," is a pattern for journalists to follow, it has become one for spin doctors to manipulate. By discounting the judgment of reporters, its over-reliance on official and "responsible" sources, and its insistence on balance, this objectivity nourishes the status quo, especially in the hands of those who would spoon feed it to the masses. Senator Joe McCarthy and Pentagon information officers among others were able to deftly ply the press by anticipating where the tenets of this journalistic creed would lead reporters. Another result of this strict adherence to objectivity--one which were more concerned with here--was a narrowing of the journalistic rules of evidence to admit to news columns only a small part of the spectrum of facts that are actually available in any situation. What's more factual and real than love for instance? Garrison Keillor (1989) writes, however, that newspapers are "useless on the subject," offering up as substitutes "antique Victorian wedding announcements, quaint old advice columns, the tangled illicit affairs of the prominent and the dull narcissism of their confessions, shallow 'life style' pieces about sexuality and family, the same old horse feathers..." Granted, love may not be as easy to verify as a train wreck. Private investigators do find most of their work in the adultery trade, after all. But difficulty of proof is no excuse from a medium that promises "All the News That's Fit to Print." Leaving out love Keillor claims, is a "huge lapse of journalism that makes it impotent to describe the real world." What finally results from an over emphasis on such"objectivity" is a gutless, institutional writing that causes readers to get cynical and jaded, and finally turns many off. Journalists also experience the same blunting of emotion in reporting

-5such stripped-down stage sets of reality. The great weakness of journalists was whiskey, Sen. Paul Simon has said. Now the great weakness of journalists is cynicism. (1994)

The New Journalism was seen by many editors as being too permissive, giving every pencil-behind-the-ear kid the idea that he could sing of himself in any house fire story.

Despite repeated attempts at correcting the balance through the use of human interest elements in stories, which many editors still deride as "soft news," readers see little humanity in the newspaper. In many places, the paper stops being really useful to all but political junkies, readers of baseball box scores, and clippers of supermarket coupons. The Road Not Taken In the mid 1960's, Tom Wolfe and a loosely-formed group of like-minded journalists preached and practiced a "New Journalism" that broke the stranglehold objectivity had on newspapers. This form of literary journalism restored, and expanded on many of the literary approaches and devices journalism had left behind as it passed through the technical, social and corporate changes of the previous century. Such devices as the use of dialog, scene setting, narration and, more than that, the spirit they were used in, helped break journalism out of the "Just the Limited Set of Facts, Ma'am" type of reporting. (See Wolfe, 1973) The New Journalism was seen by many editors, however, as being too permissive, giving every pencil-behind-the-ear kid the idea that he could sing of himself in any house fire story. On top of that, critics harrumphed in with the dictum that it was Not New and Not Journalism. Not new, because the literary tradition had existed among journalists one hundred years previously. Not journalism, since by the 60s objectivity and the factual standard were well entrenched. True, some few had kept the flame alive-- John Dos Passos and James Agee, for example--and it does remain prominent in magazines. Current practitioners like Wolfe, Joan Didion, Richard Rhodes, Jane Kramer, John McPhee, Mark Kramer, Tracy Kidder, Sara Davidson and others have extended and refined the art. (See Sims, 1990) There is even a new journal in the field and some of the seminal histories and handbooks are even now being published. (See Connery, 1992)

-6But day-to-day journalism is often still immune to this movement. Millions of pounding Remingtons have thoroughly beaten down the traces which journalistic writing is expected to gallop through, and literary techniques have never widely caught on in newspapers. The Way Out of Cynicism and Despair Editors often scorn what they perceive is the loose way literary journalism plays with facts and its sometimes subjective stance. But the real reason why literary journalism is not more widely accepted may not be what editors claim it to be after all. It may not be the genre's supposed lack of objectivity or factuality that truly bothers these gatekeepers. Editors, not really a philosophical bunch after all, may be asking for something much more simple and practical than these sticky concepts. What they may really want is a kind of reality consensus, a simple public verifiability, which they feel literary journalism does not readily give them. With onrushing deadlines, personal reputations and the reputations of their publications at stake, editors want to be able to pick up a phone and get someone else they believe in to say that something is so. In other words, they want some sort of confirmation in consensus reality. In descending order this gets harder as one moves from action and speech--the standard repertoire of the front page news story--to attitudes, thoughts, intentions, and emotions--more the province of literary journalism. It's not that these latter forms of expression are any less real or factual, it's just that peoples' thoughts, attitudes and feelings are harder to verify. But why not use other information available in a courtroom, for example, to get a better portrait of reality: the facts that the bailiff is rude and rumpled, that the judge is grumpy and her hand is shaking from a hangover, and that it's a steely, sunny day in mid-winter? These may be important factors in how an African-American man on trial perceives and is treated by the justice system, and may help explain later actions of that same man. There's no more factual, objective proceeding than a trial. And yet, isn't it common for attorneys to make such literary moves as setting scenes, causing witnesses to spill their inmost thoughts, getting significant dialog on the record? These fact patterns, although it takes work to pin them down, cross-check and verify, are not trivial. As any regular viewer of Court TV knows, a weapon and a body are not always enough to convict someone of a murder. Such trials often hinge on suchfactual intangibles, for example, as intents and motives. At this writing, much is being made in the double murder trial of a footballstar-turned-movie-actor as to the actions and motives of a detective at the crime scene in an attempt to establish that he tampered with evidence. Witnesses are being plied with questions to elicit the defendants state of mind. And even the attitudes of the victims are being brought into question.

-7Standards of Evidence News, as it is now commonly written, is still too often the literature of despair. Because of the great omission of information that results by focusing on facts that are easily publicly verified, journalism encourages us to think that everything's the same old "horse feathers": That one air disaster, car accident, bank embezzlement, prostitution arrest, madman spraying bullets, street riot, coup d'etat, war, cease fire or house fire is more like the others that preceded it, and not a unique event in its own right. It persuades us to believe that the mystery of the human condition is a muddle, and its misery is infinitely repetitious and renewable, and further, that there is nothing we can do about it. Should news try to show the uniqueness of individuals and the events they are involved in, it may begin to do the things that literature can do, and share in what it is valued for. By giving us living, breathing people through language that allows us to metaphorically see, hear, taste, smell or touch, journalism might convince us of the variety of ways that individuals react to situations. Yes, sometimes people are lost to drink, or drugs. Yes, sometimes they deliberately drive into a tree in the middle of the night, but other times they take impossible situations and make something else out of them. That's the true nature of individuality, after all: Not everyone is going to hang himself. A journalism that would use this literary approach is still a relatively fresh field of study, however, and such comfortable old shoe standards of evidence as those used in traditional news gathering are not yet widely accepted. But if journalism is ever going to provide a way out of despair, journalists need to begin to examine what these standards might be. Definitive solutions rely on practitioners adopting them, and may be hard to come by, but at this early stage a few tentative suggestions might be advanced: Let them have time. Editors might concede defeat in terms of beating broadcast media to the breakfast table. What if instead of half-cooked, hot-off-the-press breaking stories, they gave their readers more of the stuff they come to newspapers for--in depth analysis? In the 1991 industry study Keys to Our Survival, a national survey of a cross-section of U.S. adults said that among the top changes theyd like to see in newspapers would be more follow-up reports, explanations of complex issues, in-depth stories that go beyond headlines and more stories that focus on people rather than events. (Ketter, et al , 1991, p. 14) All these things take time, and all are friendly environments for a more literary journalism. In addition, to track down the more subjective beast, journalists need what Sims (1990) calls immersion..time spent on the job.(pp. 8-12) Believe that opinions, emotions and attitudes are real. Dont discount them because they are not as easy to verify as someones hat size. As far as readers lives go, they are infinitely more real and significant than

-8the gross national product of Bolivia, although not available in the Information Please Almanac. Leo Bogart in a recent piece for a newspaper trade magazine argues this very point: Great newspaper reporting rouses readers empathy; it transports them into the same state of excitement and suspense produced by a compelling work of fiction... What makes newspapers taste of reality? Not an extensive daily catalog of minor dereliction, disaster and death, but stories that transport the readers.... (Bogart, 1995) Take advantage of new technology. Widely available, computer-accessed, one-to-one communication channels may make it possible for reporters and editors to more broadly cross-check information and verify conflicting accounts of a more personal nature. The ability to instantly and directly poll and query large numbers of individuals may allow editors to find a consensus in ideas that before seemed to exclusively belong to isolated fringe members of society. Access to extensive databases and other libraries of information may allow editors to uncover more obscure sources to provide underpinnings for less popular ideas. Reporters might use e-mail lists, for example, to gain access to those who might corroborate whatever doesnt fit the current accepted wisdom. Groups discussing cold fusion, nanotechnology and UFO abductions, are available on the net. Reporters might get alternative views and perspectives from sources who fit the responsible spokesperson profile as they understand it. Bookstores sell current Internet directories with these listings. Dont call it color. This term belittles and belies the power that sense details have in writing. And besides, it refers only to one sense and makes it sound like an afterthought. Realize that front page news is indeed hard and abstract for most readers. Sure its good for them, but so are Brussels sprouts. As a first step, reporters should promise that theyll never write another number with lots of zeros unless they attach a flesh and blood person to it. Avoid thinking of literary journalism in either/or terms. Some editors throw the baby out with the bathwater, by refusing to consider anything resembling this form. Many closed the books on it back in its bellbottom pants era after some of the excesses of the New Journalism were exposed. Editors might read Sims book (1990) or a recent issue of Creative Nonfiction (1994) for some current examples of how the genre is responsibly handled these days.

-9 Build a vision of this wider reality into journalism school instruction. Journalism schools increasingly realize they owe their existence to acceptance by their liberal arts colleagues. Professors might give more emphasis to developing work habits which would encourage sprouting reporters to go beyond the superficial "who, what, when, where, why and how" in developing a story. Other standards of evidence might be developed which are just as respectful of fact, but more accepting of a wider range of the facts available. Charges that literary journalism encourages reporters to make things up, focuses on "feel good" news, gives readers cheap thrills, or the reporter a soap box, could become less valid when professional standards and methods for collecting news in this manner become more widespread. The Dream and the Deed A recent New Yorker cartoon captured the still-current stance among many traditional editors. It showed a jellaba-clad scribe writing on a scroll, while another, arms folded, glared at him. "You mean," the first scribe was saying, "when I use a phrase like 'Pharaoh dreamed seven cows came up out of the Nile,' or 'God remembered Noah,' or David's wife Michal 'despised him in her heart'--that's speculative journalism?" (Fisher, 1993). If the scribe were following John Hersey's rule that the motto on his writer's license must read "None of this was made up," (Hersey, 1980) his writing might more rightly be called literary journalism. And the scribe might more rightly be praised, than glared at for recording the true reason for his people being lead to the Promised Land. And here is where journalistic scribes writing a more literary journalism may yet find a niche. News that is more literary might save, and be savored. Not because of its alleged happy messages, sensationalism or distortion, but because it strives to tell the honest truth about individuals who live in ways that don't fit the old bromides which tend to dehumanize and bury this uniqueness in a gray blanket of abstractions. This truth is ever now and new and not repeatable any more than the seconds it takes you to read these words. Journalists must tell us not only those facts which we can immediately see, but also what people know in their dreams, memories and hearts. By doing so, newspapers will give us a fuller account of reality, allowing us to find the hope we can see in the unfolding of real events. The poet e.e. cummings wrote "deeds cannot dream what dreams can do." (Firmage, 1991) A more traditional journalism cannot seem to dream what literary journalism can do. But for journalism to survive, it must open its mind and heart and begin to have these dreams.

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WORKS CITED Bogart, Leo. A Matter of Credibility? Presstime, 17, November, 1995: 32. Connery, Thomas B., ed. A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Firmage, George, J. ed. E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems. New York: Liveright, 1991: 511. The line appears in "as freedom is a breakfastfood." (sic) Fisher, Ed. "You mean when I use the phrase..." The New Yorker. 69, Sept. 30, 1993: 106. Gutkind, Lee. Creative Nonfiction, Vol.1 Issue 1, 1993, Issue 2, 1994. Hersey, John. "The Legend on the License." The Yale Review. 70, 1980: 125. Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Random House, 1934: 4-5. Keillor, Garrison. "The Heart of the Matter." The New York Times. Feb. 14, 1989: A23. Ketter, William B., Ron Martin, et al. Keys to Our Survival. Washington, D.C.: American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1991. Kinneavy, James. A Theory of Discourse. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Mencher, Melvin. News Reporting and Writing. Madison, WI: Brown &I Benchmark, 1994. Merrill, John C. and S. Jack Odell. Philosophy and Journalism. New York: Longman, 1983: 174-179. Siebert, Fred S., Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm. Four Theories of the Press. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1963. Simon, Paul. Quoted from the PBS radio news program All Things Considered. 11/15/94. Sims, Norman, ed. The Literary Journalists. New York: Ballantine, 1984. ____________, ed. Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Wolfe, Tom. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.