Page 157 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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question when they least expected it. She built a reputation for asking tough,
fair questions, demanding clarification in common language. She felt compelled
to capture and report with accuracy the real personalities and beliefs of some
of Washington's most influential people.
She has covered eight presidents and has received numerous journalism
awards and honorary degrees. A self-described feminist, she works hard to reach
out to young women journalists.

SOURCES: Current Biography, 1994; William A. Taft, Encyclopedia of 20th Century
Journalists, 1984.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

THOMPSON, HUNTER S. (1937- ). The originator of gonzo journalism,
Thompson influenced a generation of political writers with his participatory,
high-intensity, spontaneous reporting. It abandoned objectivity and placed the
reporter at the center of the story, usually in an extreme situation and adversarial
to the subject. Thompson's literary persona is that of a hyperstimulated outlaw
prophet in the vanguard of the Apocalypse. His theme is the meaninglessness
of American life, especially as it is reflected in the political subculture. "I have
a fatal compulsion to find a higher sense in things that make no sense at all,"
he writes.
After working for several newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune
and the National Observer, Thompson joined Rolling Stone in 1970 and stayed
for five years. Political corruption, according to Kaul, "operates as a metaphor
in Thompson's works for the degradation of American culture. Deception, fraud,
greed, hubris, lying, and relentless perjury, among many others—all are indicted
and condemned in an explosively prophetic moral rhetoric."
His best-known books are Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
and The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, but he wrote
six other books. His work has also appeared in leading magazines.
SOURCES: Robert Draper, Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, 1990;
Arthur J. Kaul, "Hunter S. Thompson," in Thomas B. Connery, ed., A Sourcebook of
American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre, 1992.
Paul Ashdown

TIME MAGAZINE was the first successful newsmagazine in America. It was
founded in February 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce, two young
Yale graduates with modest journalistic experience, but no absence of self-
confidence. Hadden and Luce sought a unique publication, a weekly synthesis
of the news. Time would present "a final report on a whole world of news,"
organized into different entries each containing no more than 400 words. These,
in turn, were written with a distinctive style and omniscient point of view.
Presentation was all-important. Time initially had no reporters—only staff mem-
bers who based their entries on newspaper clippings.