A lot of people have been talking about 'gonzo' journalism, which has nothing whatsoever to do with
Gonzo the Great. It has everything to do with Hunter Thompson, who recently began
pining for the fjords. He created 'gonzo' journalism by putting himself into everything he wrote. How was this new or even good?
Was Ellery Queen a 'gonzo' mystery writer? Mark Twain included himself in many of his travelogues, even some of the completely fictional ones. Gossip columnists have been using it as a writing technique for decades and it had been the primary means of differentiating between a journalist and a reporter. Reporters report, journalist produce verbose diaries. What Hunter Thompson did was make it fashionable to pretend that one was the other.
After he started doing it, so did everyone else. Practically the entire news world today is based on people talking about themselves, their opinions, their lifestyles. The only news on FOX or CNN comes as interruptions to the regular schedule of intellectual masturbation. Just as nepotism and cronyism became collectively known as 'networking', progress changes what some words denote, not always making them clearer.
Goe, was positive there were once other writers here than he and Beck.
