Reincarnations of the New Journalism

The New Journalists’ ideas continue to be explored and refined by new generations of reporters and editors. In the early 1990s the spirit of the movement was reincarnated in a genre called “creative nonfiction.” That movement gained momentum under author and editor Lee Gutkind, who organized an annual creative nonfiction writing workshop at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, helped establish one of the first U.S. degree programs in creative nonfiction, founded the journal Creative Nonfiction, and published several anthologies. In the editorial rooms of newspapers and magazines, in professional journalism organizations, and in creative writing workshops across the United States, writers and editors continued to take inspiration from the New Journalists, experimenting with forms, styles and practices that could work for and give credence to a genre that tries to be simultaneously creative, personal and “true.”