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Gonzo is a style of news reporting, film making or other types of multimedia production in which the reporter, author or creator is directly involved with the topic, rather than just being a passive observer of it, and which blurs distinctions between author and subject and between fiction and nonfiction. The widely acclaimed American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson (1937 - 2005) is generally credited with being the creator of gonzo journalism beginning around 1970. The word itself has long been used in slang with a different meaning and was the title of a 1960 song, although it was popularized in its usage regarding reporting by Thompson. Gonzo arose out of a dissatisfaction with the highly polished form of journalism that was generally accepted at the time and out of the belief that so-called objectivity was often more of a myth than a reality. Rather, the essence of a story could be more effectively conveyed to an audience by direct involvement of the reporter or author and by including raw personal experiences rather than a polished final product. The emergence of gonzo was a major part of the development of the so-called new journalism, whose evolution continues to this day. Its appearance was perhaps influenced by the availability of the facsimile machine, of which Thompson was a great advocate, because it allowed news to be transmitted just as it was written down and published soon thereafter rather than waiting for editing. This may be somewhat analogous to the way that the currently popular blogs have been made possible by the development of the Internet and the great ease of accessing and using the web. Created October 29, 2006. |