Claiming that literary newswriting is not a contradiction in terms, that is, an oxymoron, this essay examines some of the criteria against which literary newswriting can be measured, defines what constitutes literary newswriting in contemporary newspapers, and explains how it contributes to modern newswriting. The paper argues that (1) modern…

The New Journalism, which uses literary techniques usually restricted to fiction, has been categorized and analyzed from a number of perspectives, but little effort has been made to delineate its intellectual and philosophical roots. The New Journalism arose from the intellectual tradition of Romanticism, as opposed to Classicism, the movement…

This paper describes an episode in the history of journalism that reveals a continuing tension in news reporting. Dating from the invention of the telegraph in the late nineteenth century, news reports have been increasingly patterned after either a "scientific" or a "literary" model. The scientific report is based on irreducible facts, high-speed…

Reading, learning, and practicing various literary writing styles combines creative writing, news writing, and new journalism techniques in an advanced writing course at St. Bonaventure University. (RL)