Title: Book Review: Journalism & Realism: Rendering American Life
Abstract: In the foreword to Thomas B. Connery's book, Journalism and Realism: Rendering American Life, Roy Peter Clark quotes media scholar Jay Rosen as saying objectivity is a word that stands for several different ideas, depending upon the speaker or writer (p. xiii). Clark adds that a reporter gathers a thousand details and uses only ten, a subjective distortion by subtraction. It is when the reporter distorts by addition that he steps over a line that should not be crossed (p. xiv).The book returns to the roots of modern journalism by examining writers, editors, and publications from the 1830s to early 1900s. It looks at their effort to describe everyday as realistically as possible while still preserving the literary flourishes common to the era.Connery cites the work of Bret Harte, a pioneering journalist who wrote about in California mining camps. Harte included colorful characters, speaking distinctively, which gave his readers on the East Coast an illusion of authenticity. Connery writes that distinguishing between the real and is not always clear and clean; in fact throughout the nineteenth century a tension existed between the real and ideal (p. 7). Connery's book explores that tension in an entertaining and educational style.Connery quotes magazine editor Chares Godfrey Leland who, in 1862, advised journalists to stress realism in their writing. Write about what you see and not what you read, Leland urged. He encouraged his writers to include a keen appreciation and observation of life in their work.Connery traces this style of realistic writing back to Benjamin Day's New York Sun and the emergence of the Penny Press. The penny papers were attempts to depict urban life, but as with all journalism, they did so in a highly selective way and largely by embracing existing cultural narratives and themes, even while shocking or offending readers with content (p. 27).The example of Helen Jewett, a beautiful New York prostitute murdered by the scion of a prominent Connecticut family, is cited by Connery. Her story played out in the pages of James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald over several days. Detailed descriptions of the corpse and the room where she was murdered both titillated and shocked Bennett's subscribers, driving up readership.Walt Whitman is recognized more as a poet than a journalist, but he got his start writing for papers such as the New York Aurora and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Connery writes that Whitman absorbed the urban spectacle and regularly shared his wonder and pleasure at this passing parade of people and activity (p. 41). He adds that Whitman's journalistic style differed markedly from that of his contemporaries. For example, Whitman's story of a fire did not contain the names, addresses, and description of the fire or statements from people who witnessed the conflagration. These details were included in stories about the fire in the New York Herald and the New York Tribune. However, Whitman appears to have talked to no one. As with the stroll through the market, he is an observer, a witness-not just of working people doing a normal, everyday task, but of a dangerous and destructive event as it occurs (p. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-05-07
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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