The Evolution of Literary Journalism in the Digital Age.

Abstract

Firstly, this chapter covers the intersection between traditional print literary journalism and the advent of online literary journalism. Secondly, it traces scholarly attention to the ‘evolution’ of literary journalism, primarily in the US since the New Journalism of the 1960s, showing how literary journalism in the twenty-first century has been supercharged by technological and creative innovations which have transformed the kinds of texts produced and how those texts are accessed and experienced. Thirdly, throughout, it illustrates that radical technological and visionary changes have been accompanied, nevertheless, by a sense of historical continuity evident in an abiding regard for the New Journalism and/or its foremost proponent, Tom Wolfe - not least in scholarly accounts of a ʼnew wave’ and ‘golden age’ for literary journalism inaugurated by the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek’ (2012). Lastly, in the context of examples, it presents the reader with a conundrum: the latest immersive multimedia narratives driven by film production approaches run counter, in fact, to Wolfe’s print bias and dismissal in The New Journalism (1973) of the cognitive impact of film. It invites debate on whether Wolfe’s cognitive theory is ripe for revaluation even as prestige in literary journalism, as in literature broadly, continues to attach chiefly to print.