This week, journalists had their version of the Oscars (minus the red carpet and catty remarks about who-wore-what). The Pulitzer announcements are always an electric moment in a newsroom. Back in the old days, we’d gather around one designated computer and … Read more
It’s hard, I know, to make a case for gonzo journalism in an age when reality is beset by exaggeration, even lies. And yet I’ve found myself drawn back to the work of Hunter S. Thompson, who had an uncanny … Read more
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual … Read more
I just got off the plane from the Republican National Convention with a bulletproof vest still packed in my suitcase, and I have to wonder if last week would have made Hunter S. Thompson lose his mind. Before the convention, … Read more
A story without sound lies too dead on the page. Imagine “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” by Jon Franklin, without the pop … pop … pop of the operating-room sensors. Or Tom Wolfe‘s “The Girl of … Read more
It’s easy to miss. A sobering second, surrounded by intemperance. But there it is, the transitional scene after Hunter S. Thompson opens “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” with some lewd banter in a … Read more
Join Nieman Storyboard on Pinterest! We’re expanding our reach via categories on everything from reporting resources to tip sheets. Among our growing number of boards: … Read more
Why hasn’t anybody Hunter S. Thompsonized this election? Or have they, and we missed it? Esquire’s Charlie Pierce approacheth – In the interest of keeping you abreast of news that hasn’t happened yet, I would like to introduce you … Read more
The New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s – by Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and others – made the biggest collective splash in recent American nonfiction, and certainly enlarged our idea of what the genre could do. The best of it may endure, but, 50 or 100 years from now, will people still be enthralled by Thompson’s psychedelic ramblings or the early Wolfe’s strings of italics and exclamation marks? More lasting, I think, as a grand pointillist mural of our time and place as expressed in the lives of an encyclopedic range of people, will be the work of John McPhee. Read more