Seminar- Tom Wolf

In this seminar we discussed The New Journalism by Tom Wolf, this is a collection of articles written in a new journalism format, he also gives the reader a reason why it is written this way telling them about how the form began. New journalism was a way in which journalists could take a hold of the reader through the emotion sense. Unlike old journalistic techniques new journalism is written more like a novel, it descibes the news rather than reports it. This style of writing you could argue grabs the readers attention because it gives them an opportunity to feel what is happening rather than seeing the facts. Nowdays readers want it shown to them rather than told, they dont want to just see facts and numbers they want to see emotion, scenery, as much description as possible to report the news.

New journalism first started during the war, reporters began putting down as much desciption as possible because people wanted to know exactly what was happening at this point. They wanted to know or I could say feel the news that was going on because it was a sensitive time so the news couldn't be just reported in a string of facts they wanted more from there papers. This is how New Journalism was created, reporters were now writing down every piece of description they could to write news articles, the style is novel writing, this however you could argue it being a good thing to be emotionally involved in a story can be also a bad thing. If their is too much emotion and faffing put into a story this means that people will also get attached to stories, reporters can twist stories in whichever way they want to get moral support from the public. Too much desription means that you don't get straight to the point, it could mean that people have to read between the lines to get the real truth. Although people have also argued that it gets us away from the rubbish of tabloidization, the yellow journalist which meant that people could engage more with the writing because of the improvement of the quality.