The Participatory Journalism of Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion: Creating New Reporting Styles

This study analyzes the rhetoric of selected texts by the New Journalists in order tot highlight their use of self-consciously persuasive styles not only to report on but to critique contemporary political scene. 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 the stories they told. Through the critical lens of Kenneth Burke's dramatism and Mikhail Bahktin's dialogism, this study analyzes the rhetoric of selected texts by these New Journalists, specifically Herr's "Dispatches", Mailer's "The Armies of the Night", Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail", and Didion's "Salvador and Miami", in a way that highlights their use of self-consciously persuasive styles not only to report on but to critique the contemporary political scene.