The Participatory Journalism of Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion

Book excerpt: Among New Journalists of the 1960s-1970s, Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion approached their subjects by placing themselves in the center of their narratives as protagonists and by openly acknowledging their subjective impressions of the events they reported. Unlike journalists who adopted the conventions of detachment and objectivity, these New Journalists employed their subjective, literary styles to construct their narrative personae and to dramatize not only the events like the Vietnam War and the 1972 presidential campaign but their direct participation in t.