What is Gonzo journalism?
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It’s a style of journalism where the writer is the main character in the story they are telling. Instead of being objective, you experience the story from the author’s point of view which naturally includes their biases.
I think Anthony Bourdain’s travel stories are great examples of modern gonzo journalism.
Gonzo journalism is where the journalist writes in the first person as someone participating in what they are reporting. Unlike traditional journalism that tries to report objective fact, gonzo instead makes no claims at objectivity and focuses entirely on the subjective experiences of the journalist. This not only includes the subjective feelings of the subject matter that they are reporting on, but they also include their subjective feeling about society in general in relation to what they are reporting.
Journalism from the journalists point of view. The author is also the protagonist and experiences what they are reporting on.
Some of examples are from VICE, where they would go and do some of the weirder things, like instead of “Some people injecting saline into their sexual organs for pleasure”, it’s “[Here is what it’s like to have this done.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/4wba33/this-is-a-story-about-getting-your-balls-inflated)”(no pictures, but NSFW text)
Other examples would be Hunter Thompson, who instead of just writing about the Hells Angels, joined them for a year.
It’s a style of journalism where the journalist writes about the event from their own perspective and experience with a lot of subjectivity and dramatic flare. Normal journalism is typically written from an objective angle, meaning the writer is trying to avoid including their own opinion, perspective, or bias into the article and usually writes in third person. In Gonzo journalism the writer is not only taking an active role in the story, but is writing the article from their own perspective and is not trying to be objective at all.
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Traditional journalists are supposed to report on a story from the outside, avoiding personal bias and conflicts of interest (with varying degrees of success). Gonzo journalists become part of the story.
It was coined by Hunter S Thompson.
Traditional journalism is all about recording events, but not interfering with them, like the “prime directive” on Star Trek. A journalist at a football game for example, would stand by, noting the scores and referee calls and effort put in by players. It would be unethical for a journalist covering an event to participate in it, because the journalist would “lose objectivity” and not cover the two football teams evenly for fairly.
Gonzo journalism takes the opposite approach.
A gonzo journalist like Hunter S Thompson would want to help the reader understand what football games are like. So he would *play on a team* instead of watching, record the *feel* of playing the game and the events in the locker room. He’s tell you about the sweat of other players hitting your face, the fight the players got into at a bar, the raw emotion.
There both valid forms of journalism. Traditional journalism is detached, neutral, and clearheaded. Gonzo journalism helps you understand the human experience of the subject by being the exact opposite.
Hunter Thompson invented a style of reporting where he made himself the main character and you got to see the world through his eyes
Read Hunter Thompson’s short story about his cat, Mr. Screwjack – book aptly titled, ‘Screwjack’. Great example of gonzo journalism.
I feel that just saying “it is written from the author’s viewpoint” is insufficient.
Is “Down and out in London and Paris” gonzo journalism? Or the book by that German journalist who disguised himself as a Turkish “gastarbeiter”?
Hunter Thompson invented the term to describe his own work. But maybe the comment that said his “Fear and loathing in Las Vegas” (a drug-driven fever dream) is *not* gonzo journalism is correct.
So the term has outgrown its inventor.
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