Gonzo journalism
Encyclopedia
Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

. The word "gonzo" is believed to be first used in 1970 to describe an article
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year...

 by Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...

, who later popularized the style. The term has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavors.

Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over fact to achieve accuracy—if accuracy is in fact meant to be achieved at all—and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered. It disregards the "polished", edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for a more gritty, personable approach—the personality of a piece is just as important as the event the piece is on. Use of quotations, sarcasm
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt.” Though irony and understatement is usually the immediate context, most authorities distinguish sarcasm from irony; however, others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony or employs...

, humor, exaggeration, and profanity
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...

 is common.

Among the forefathers of the new journalism
New Journalism
New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...

 movement, Thompson said in the February 15th, 1973 issue of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, "If I'd written the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."

Origin of the term

The term "gonzo" was first used in connection with Hunter S. Thompson by The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...

magazine editor Bill Cardoso
Bill Cardoso
William Joseph "Bill" Cardoso was an American journalist who was well-known for coining the term "gonzo journalism".Cardoso was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Somerville, Massachusetts...

 in 1970. He described Thompson's "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year...

", which was written for the June 1970 Scanlan's Monthly
Scanlan's Monthly
Scanlan's Monthly was a short-lived monthly publication, which ran from March 1970 to January 1971. Edited by Warren Hinckle III and Sidney Zion, it featured politically controversial muckraking and was ultimately subject to an investigation by the FBI during the Nixon administration. It was...

, as "pure Gonzo journalism." Cardoso claimed that "gonzo" was South Boston Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

 slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 describing the last man standing after an all-night drinking marathon. He also claimed that it was a corruption of the French Canadian
French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...

 word "gonzeaux," which means "shining path," although this is disputed.

Another speculation is that the word may have been inspired by the 1960 hit song "Gonzo" by New Orleans rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 pianist James Booker
James Booker
James Carroll Booker III was a jazz, New Orleans rhythm and blues and soul musician born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.-Biography:...

. This last possibility seems to be supported by the 2007 oral biography of Thompson, which states that the term is taken from a song by Booker; though, it does not explain why Thompson or Cardoso would have chosen the term to describe Thompson's journalism. According to a Greg Johnson biographical note on Booker, the song title "Gonzo" comes from a character in a movie called The Pusher, which in turn may have been inspired by a 1956 Evan Hunter
Evan Hunter
Evan Hunter was an American author and screenwriter. Born Salvatore Albert Lombino, he legally adopted the name Evan Hunter in 1952...

 novel of the same title.

Thompson himself first used the term referring to his own work on page twelve of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enterprise. The American Dream.
Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism."

Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson based his style on William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

's notion that "fiction is often the best fact." While the things that Thompson wrote about are basically true, he used previously mentioned satirical devices to drive his points home. He often wrote about recreational drugs and alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

 use which added additional subjective flair to his reporting. The term "gonzo" has also come into (sometimes pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...

) use to describe journalism that is in the vein of Thompson's style, characterized by a drug-fueled stream of consciousness writing technique.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas followed the Mint 400
Mint 400
The Mint 400 is an annual desert off road race that was resumed in 2008 after a 20 year hiatus.The race was for both motorcycles, until 1977, and four-wheel vehicles sponsored by Del Webb's Mint Hotel and Casino. Del Webb, a well known builder and friend of Howard Hughes, was owner of the Mint...

 piece in 1971 and included a main character by the name of Raoul Duke
Raoul Duke
Raoul Duke is the fictional character and antihero based on Hunter S. Thompson in his autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book was originally written under the name Raoul Duke....

, accompanied by his attorney, Dr. Gonzo. Although this book is considered a prime example of gonzo journalism, Thompson regarded it as a failed experiment. He had intended it to be an unedited record of everything he did as it happened, but he edited the book five times before publication.

Thompson would instigate events himself, often in a prankish or belligerent manner, and then document both his actions and those of others. Notoriously neglectful of deadlines, Thompson often annoyed his editors because he faxed articles late--" “too late to be edited, yet still in time for the printer" Thompson wanted his work to be read as he wrote it, in its "true Gonzo" form. Historian Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley is an American author, professor of history at Rice University and a fellow at the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. Brinkley is the history commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair...

 said gonzo journalism requires virtually no rewriting and frequently uses transcribed interviews and verbatim telephone conversations.

"I don't get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist's view: 'I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view,'" Thompson said in an interview for the online edition of The Atlantic. "Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

."

Lasting influence

Thompson felt that objectivity in journalism
Objectivity (journalism)
Parent article: Journalism ethics and standardsObjectivity is a significant principle of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.- Definitions :In the context...

 was a myth. Gonzo journalism has now become a bona-fide style of writing that concerns itself with "telling it like it is", similar to the New Journalism
New Journalism
New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...

 of the 1960s, led primarily by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

 and also championed by Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....

, George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...

, Terry Southern
Terry Southern
Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...

, and John Birmingham
John Birmingham
John Birmingham is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool, England and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970.-Early life and career:...

--in fact, gonzo journalism is considered a sub-genre of new journalism.

Though, when asked if there is a difference by Playboy in Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, Thompson said "Yeah, I think so. Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, for instance, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They're both much better reporters than I am, but then I don't really think of myself as a reporter."

In a May 1st, 2010 article, Michigan Online News writer Jennifer Marinelli argues the long-lasting, sweeping effects of Thompson's work--not only on journalism, but the collective conscience as well.

"Hunter S. Thompson didn't just create a new form of journalism. He created a new way of thinking that is still important in today’s society. A style that is so influential that it has seeped through to the hearts and minds of the succeeding generations. Within the last two decades there have been an onslaught of novels, documentaries, works of art, and websites devoted to Thompson. It is doubtful that many members of the Digital Age partake in the hard gonzo lifestyle of drugs and alcohol that Thompson symbolizes. However, it is hard to ignore the similarities between Thompson's gonzo journalism and today's growing popularity of citizen journalism through new media like blogs and Twitter."
  • La Jerga: Periodismo Gonzo Independiente
    La Jerga: Periodismo Gonzo Independiente
    La Jerga: Periodismo Gonzo Independiente is a free, bilingual , gonzo newspaper established in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in April 2003, that has been publishing consistently monthly for the past four years.La Jerga is the voice of the alternative culture and is an independent current which...

  • New Journalism
    New Journalism
    New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...

  • Transmetropolitan
    Transmetropolitan
    Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk comic book series written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson and published by DC Comics. The series was originally part of the short-lived DC Comics imprint Helix, but upon the end of the book's first year the series was moved to the Vertigo imprint as DC...



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