FROM GONZO TO POMO:
is it new journalism?
by
Martin Hirst, Lecturer in Journalism,
School of Communication and Media
University of Western Sydney Nepean.
REFERENCES
For some reason (or perhaps a very good reason) HST has quite the gonzo
following in Australia. This work by Martin Hirst will also be running on my new journalism
site, Warrior Wordsmiths.
It pleases me greatly to have his permission to use it here, being a member of the
Commonwealth and all (in addition, this accounts for the spelling variations here and
there, in this work and on the site). A few apostrophes might have been
lost in the formatting; all the other strange symbols were added by Martin.
Martin Hirst teaches in the School of Communication and Media at the
University of Western Sydney Nepean. He is writing a PhD, Grey Collar
Journalism, on the social relations of news production. Martin lives
happily ever after in the Blue Mountains, with his wife Tiffany White,
Orwell the kelpie and Slug the beautiful usspy. He writes regularly for
several journals and magazines, when they let him.
NOTE:Ed Hunt, is real,
only the name has been changed to prevent the guilty coming after him.
From Gonzo to Pomo: Hunting New Journalism Down Under
Part 1: A loaded Revolver. Postmodernists in denial.
Catching up with Mr. Ed.
New journalism has also been called Gonzo journalism
after the nickname of one of its founders, Hunter S. Thompson.
Conley 1997: 225
This could well be an urban myth. Gonzo might be a contraction of the
Spanish word, gonzagas which means to fool. Or, it could be from a
French Canadian word gonzeaux meaning shining path (Othitis 1997).
Whatever. When I recently asked a student to include Gonzo in his
seminar presentation on alternative magazines he had a simple question,
"what's Gonzo journalism?" Yeah, right.
That Adam didn't know is no real surprise, he wasn't even born the year
Hunter S. and his attorney were somewhere around Barstow "when the drugs
began to take hold" (Thompson 1993: 46). I laughed like a kookaburra when
Adam came into class with a copy of Dr Thompson's The Hells Angels, a
Strange and Terrible Saga in one hand and a Revolver in the
other. No, not Gonzo's favoured .357, Revolver is a street magazine
published in Sydney! Associate Editor Oscar Hillerstrom told Adam that
Revolver does, to some extent, favour a Gonzo style:
[Thompson's] style is to be loose and free, in a sense, with language,
yet at the same time be very sharp and very concise with what's actually
going onº with mainstream papers its the other
way round. They are very concise with language, but the truth is sometimes
swept aside. Revolver is an entertainment magazine and its
entertainment as a magazine" (quoted in Webb 1998).
So, are Gonzo and New Journalism alive and well in Australia at the end
of the millenium? let's take a look at the forensics, if we can find a
body!
Australia's unheralded Honcho of Gonzo, Ed Hunt, says young people
today are not so much angry as they're "despairing." Like me, he believes
the postmodern pundits share some responsibility for this. Ed's notoriously
hard to catch and I arrived home one day to find a note pinned to my front
door with a Bowie knife, it was headed "Points of contact between Gonzo
and Australia":
July 31, 1992 - Hunter S. Thompson,
[Rolling Stone editor] Jann Wenner, P J O'Rourke and Bill
Greider meet with Bill Clinton at Doe's Eat Place only weeks before the
Presidential Election. Bill has already done his very popular saxophone
routine. Rolling Stone journalists are representing the rock vote.
Bill gets the cover!
Jan 18, 1993 - Peter Corris, Reg Mombassa,
Linda Jaivin and Kathy Bail meet with President Keating at the Ashfield
Hotel. Keating gets to reminisce about his days as the manager of the band,
the Ramrods, and spread the gospel according to Paul to Australia's rock
vote. Paul gets the March cover of Rolling Stone. Yea gods! What a
coincidence Marty!?!
Is this a naïve, copy-cat journalism OR a cynical political
strategy inspired by the success of Mr. Bills rise to politico-rock
stardom? I would suggest both. I guess this link revolves more around rock
journalism than Gonzo, though Linda Jaivins piece in RS has
elements of Gonzo in the style (perhaps she's too tame?).
Having considered the material from the Net, I am of the opinion that
Gonzo is alive and well Down Under - if only in
a twisted, entertainment-focussed way.
Ed had included his own distilled comments on Gonzo, with some help
from Christine O., our email Gonzo buddy. Its easier to put the list in
than to recreate definitions from scratch:
- Overlappipng themes of sex, violence, drugs, sport and politics;
- use of epigrammatical quotes and references to public figures;
- a tendency to wander away from the topic;
- sarcasm and vulgarity as humour;
- creative and conversational prose style;
- close scrutiny of the world around the writer.
Mr. Ed, you're a genius, a legend in your own lounge room. Thanks, and
look out for the sharks! Ed had left me a pile of stuff he'd downloaded
from the WWW. There are plenty of people out there who worship at the many
virtual shrines to Gonzo. The best of them is The Great Thompson
Hunt, by a young Canadian, Christine Othitis. There you will find
everything you need to know about Gonzo and the New Journalists, as well
there's some of Christine's writing. The name is
Warrior Wordsmiths
Bookmark it!
New Journalism emerged in the 1960s as a response to "a revolutionary
period" in which "the usual five Ws approach to journalism" failed to
meet the neEd's of a young and angry generation (Conley 1997: 225). What are
we to make of claims (Hartley 1996) that there is a new kind of
journalism emerging as we approach the end of the 20th century?
New Journalism was new in the late 1960s, but what is Postmodern
Journalism? As we shall see media theorist John Hartley calls it
"semiotics with funding," I call it bullshit!
If there is Postmodern Journalism in the 1990s does it speak to an
angry generation and where does it come from? Can we point to changed
circumstances that amount to a revolutionary period? Certainly there has
been a revolution of sorts in technology, the creation of what Richard
Harwood calls a "new media age" (Harwood & Postman c1995).
Postmodernists claim that the information revolution has finished
modernism for good, but in politics they prefer that sick modernist
ideology, "liberalism without compromise", to revolutionary
change:
The radical option is [no longer] to oppose power but to create
different kinds of powerº that might be more
fluid, flexible, diverse, multiple, but is, for all that, still power (Wark
1998: 36).
New Journalism was the antithesis of this statement. Gonzo attacked the
military-industrial complex and encouraged youth to tear it down.
Postmodernists not only want to destroy our collective memory of the
sixties (Wark 1998), they are in denial about the existence of the
military-industrial complex. They see instead an entertainment structure,
driven by Hollywood and the Pentagon (Wark c1998: 28). there's a simple,
but effective answer to this: Sombeody has to make the
Tamagochi!
Im sitting at the computer and its 36 hours till deadline. Two
o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and there's an almighty screeching of tyres
outside. When I look out the window there's Ed's intensive-care white
Kingswood ute, Lucille, hard up against the fence; engine running and the
drivers door flung open. Ed sprints up shouting. "I need my knife,
there's a black snake under the dashboard." He retrieves the knife and
dives back into the ute. After a couple of minutes of indescribable noise
and horror Ed emerges, the snake gutted, filleted and ready for the BBQ.
"Nice work, Ed," I mumble as he pushes past and heads straight for
the liquor cabinet. "Yeah, I need a drink. What're ya doin?"
He doesn't wait for an answer, grabbing the first few pages off the
printer and getting comfortable in my study. "Sure Ed, take a seat. Let
me know what you think." How I've come to regret my innocent
invitation. You can't stop maniacal intelligence when its fuelled by 47
proof Wild Turkey. But what the hey! "Settle in Ed, but remember,
anything you say might be taken down and used against you. that's the way
it is buddy. You know the rules."
Part 2: Postmodernism Journalism.
Revolution as fashion accessory.
The movie is the principle mode of American public
story-telling
Wark c1998: 30.
In Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture, John
Hartley makes an argument for Postmodern political reporting:
sensitive to its readership, to the political importance of the story,
and to the transcodings of time, space and subject matter that characterize
a public sphere that is inside a mediasphere inside the semiosphere
(Hartley 1996: 125).
For Hartley the appearance of an edition of Vogue magazine, in
French (of course), edited by Nelson Mandela, "marks a decisive shift from
modernist to postmodern journalism" (p. 126). I could bare my teeth and
argue with Hartley's statement that Vogue is the "most recognized
name in [French] journalism" (p. 125) - the
editors of Paris Match or Le Monde may have something to say
about that Monsieur Hartley. I'd like to take Hartley by the throat, shake him like a wounded animal and chew on the meager evidence he offers to
defend his thesis - one issue of Vogue, plus a handful of stories about a soapie star past her use-by date - but there's no point.
My urges are more primal and I harbour an ugliness that demands a response. I want to rip the heart out of Hartley's claims for this new
"postmodern" journalism. I asked a colleague whether it was fair on either
side to claim a family link between New and Postmodern Journalism? He looked at me over the top of his whiskey glass, smirking. "No, the
link's not that close. But you could say they're from the same gene pool." Thanks Gerry, now well see some action.
What is Postmodern Journalism? No one explains it more clearly than Hartley himself:
Postmodern journalism is capitalized cultural studies, semiotics with funding, a carefully controlled textualization of politics for a popular readership which is highly literate in a mediasphere where scholarship has scarcely ventured (Hartley 1996: 127).
"Is that clear now?" The questions nudged out in the direction of Ed's armchair. I can tell from his answer that my booze has made him forget the incident with the snake: "If you can make sense of this gibberish without feeling like youve been evicted from Hartley's low rent mediasphere you don't need drink. Marty, fix me another Turkey on the rocks."
I ponder the aesthetics of a drunk Mr. Ed hovering over my shoulder as I struggle with Hartley's dense concept of a Postmodern Journalism that "aestheticizes" politics by combining the public with the personal, critique with fashion. According to Hartley, traditional "front-page" journalism "values one side of a binary opposition over another" in a nasty "modernist" way, while "semiotics with funding" (advertisers pay a fortune for space in Vogue) is "much more dialogic." The public struggle against apartheid is represented in Vogue:
in terms of things that traditionally belong to the private, personal sphere - not least style, fashion, personality, sensuality, beauty (Hartley 1996: 127).
I can't help thinking in my unenlightened modernist way that what
Hartley is praising here is no more than clever marketing by Vogue
- turning a life and death struggle into pretty
pictures and Nelson Mandela into a bankable fashion accessory. Ed's not
satisfied. "You know what I think?" Its purely rhetorical. "No,
what?" He let's fly and even an old cynic like me pops an eye: "This
makes Mandela a fancy brooch on a gaudy low cut sweater. The advertisers
and Vogue marketing have chipped in for dry cleaning, removing the
stain of Apartheid."
I look at Ed, grinning like a salt water crocodile; "You know Ed, I
think Pilger agrees with you. Did you see his excellent doco on the ABC
last Tuesday night?" "Yeah, he basically thinks the New South
Africas a bloody frightful place. Theyve replaced one form of oppression
with another. Now the bad guys have black faces too!" This is getting
out of hand, I try to slow him down: "Steady on Ed, we don't want to
upset the children."
"Perhaps were being a little unfair," I subtly try to change
the subject by fixing Ed another drink. "If we assume for a moment that
Hartley's right, that there is Postmodern Journalism, we might expect to
find it in a journal describing itself as the magazine of the
21st century." I shove a copy of 21C into Ed's hand,
for indeed that's what it claimed to be. He appears to be interested and
returns to the armchair, leaving me to get on with writing.
Unfortunately 21C didn't make it to the 21st century.
21C first appeared in 1995, but 26 issues later its over in the
current format. Thanks, in part, to a lack of demand for advertising space
between its expensive covers (it retailed for $9.95). In issue #25, which
is the second last, the masthead slogan has been changed to "scanning the
future," but it does contain an article that might be Postmodern
Journalism. I ask Ed to take a look at McKenzie Warks "Pop Politics," in
which a series of typical action movies, like Independence Day and
Broken Arrow, are used as a metaphor for America in the 1990s. He
reads out a line from the piece: "Hollywood still does a remarkably
good job of articulating the virtual republic" (Wark c1998 30). he's
laughing so hard it nearly chokes him, clearly he finds it amusing.
"Marty, this is no more than Hartley's capitalized cultural studies.
Hollywood movies are NOT the real world."
This new fashion in journalism is really only a version of what Wolfe
was arguing against in the 1960s, a trend he described as "Neo Fabulist".
While Wolfe is talking here about the novel, his comments apply equally to
Hartley's "semiotics with funding":
º
the Neo Fabulist becomes like the engineer
who decides to give up electricity because it has "been done" (Wolfe 1973:
41).
The postmodernists have this attitude towards history, their only claim
to fame is to place postmodern in front of everything, as if this is
enough to invent it again.
Part 3: Objectivity sucks - The Gonzo approach to political journalism.
Rockn' Rollin' Rolling Stone.
I don't quite understand this worship of objectivity in journalism. Now, just flat-out lying is different from being subjective.
HST 28 August 1997 (in Hahn)
In the 1960s Gonzo was radical chic and explicitly political - in the sense that it was the response of a
generation to the troubles of its time. New Journalism was soon identified
with those who dared to expose the vested interests that hold together the
large news proprietors and the owners of the military-industrial complex.
Thompson went to Washington DC in 1972 to cover the Nixon campaign and to
write about it in the same way he covered other stories, "as close to the
bone as I could get, and to hell with the consequences" (Thompson 1994:
14). However, there was one consequence he couldnt ignore. Thompson's
friends began to desert him, slivering into the night, in case they said
things in his presence that would "almost certainly turn up on the
newsstands two weeks later" (Thompson 1994: 15).
One of the features of New Journalism is that the point of view is both
obvious and subjective. there's honesty among all the weirdness in Fear
and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72; at least you know where
Thompson stands:
Objective journalism is a hard thing to come by these days. We all
yearn for it, but who can point the way? º don't
bother to look for it here - not under any
byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of (Thompson 1994:
44).
Fear and loathing on the campaign trail 72 is not, in
Thompson's words, a "reasoned analysis of the 72 election campaign."
Rather, in true Gonzo style it is "more a jangled campaign diary," written
over the 12 months between the primaries and the November election as a
"high-speed cinematic reel-record of what the campaign was like at the
time, not what the whole thing boiled down to or how it fits into history"
(Thompson 1994: 17).
Like much of Thompson's work, Fear and Loathing was written to be
serialised in Rolling Stone and for twenty years the magazine was
synonymous with New Journalism. However, Rolling Stone was primarily
a music magazine. As founding editor Jann Wenner said in his introduction
to the book celebrating a quarter century of the magazine:
We understood that music was the glue holding a generation together.
And through music ideas were being communicated about personal
relationships, social values, political ethics and the way we wanted to
conduct our lives. The mainstream media at that time - movies, television, newspapers and magazines - were paying scan't attention to what turned out to be
one of the biggest stories of the times: the emerging generational upheaval
in America (Wenner in Love 1993: x).
In the 1990s Rolling Stone is not the same magazine it was 30
years ago. As Christine Othitis notes, todays Rolling Stone is a
schizophrenic publication:
For a magazine that so vehemently protested the [Vietnam] war, I find
its credibility shaky when half the magazine is made up of ads for the
Army, Navy, cars and shoes. Many feel that when [Rolling Stone]
moved from San Francisco to New York, it had joined the ranks of all the
other magazines and newspapers out there that they had once fought against.
RS wasn't out anymore, it was in" (Othitis c1997).
This makes me uncomfortable. I get Kathy B. on the phone. She was a Rolling Stone editor in a previous life and has the info I need.
Yeah, it is a bit more corporate these days. But perhaps that
because the distinction between mainstream and alternative has broken
down. There is some good New Journalism in Rolling Stone, but it
really sticks out against the advertising.
Kathy mentions a few names, John Birmingham, Paul Toohey
and Linda Jaivin. She says Pauls written a book, Gods Little
Acre, that contains some classic writing in the Gonzo style. Kathy says
Paul Toohey also wrote some good material for Rolling Stone:
"there's a great story about going out to Cabramatta on a train with
some junkies." Then there's Lindas piece about spending the night as
an "S&M victim" at the Hellfire Club, "but then she got into
it." We say goodbyeand Kathy promises to send me some clippings.
Unfortunately, they wont arrive before the Turkey runs out. Ed's still
here, his stinking sweet bourbon breath on my neck. I don't know how he
manages to focus, reading over my shoulder as the cursor flies across the
screen, chased by my fingers. But he's still thinking. "It's a queer and
wrecked world Marty, ruled by market forces." My ears prick up.
"Yeah Ed, go on, I'm still listening":
"If it doesn't sellº it doesn't get said!
these shit-eating dogs called account execs have got a whole generation by
the nipples. I don't think musics got much to say these days. Even Geris
had enough of the fucking Spice Girls and wants out. º If those no-talent bimbos are the glue holding
Generation X togetherº were all
stuffed!"
I show him a piece John Birmingham emailed me, something he wrote
for Rolling Stone in early 1997 about cops attacking a rock concert
in Brisbane. "Marty, this is a classic, its all about music, sex, drugs
and power. Weve found it, a pure example of Gonzo Down Under." He
reads out a line, "Expecting their conservative National Party boss
would back them up, they were probably horrified to discover he might just
leave them with their dicks in the breeze." We piss ourselves
laughing. Way to go John, thanks a million.
Part 4: Orstraylee-yuh in the 60s - Overcoming the cringe
factor.
The ferret -
Australia's answer to Gonzo?
I inhaled, I snorted, I did all those things. Of course I did. Journos can do that. We can do anything. No one cares about us.
Malcolm Farr, September 1997.
In the 1960s when the global economy was expanding and social questions
dominated the political agenda there was money around to pay for
investigative journalism. There were plenty of Establishment journalists
breaking stories about the war in Vietnam and racial hatred in the American
south. Watergate shook the Establishment to its worm-eaten core. In
Australia, we were perhaps five years behind. It was the ugly and
treacherous dismissal of the Whitlam government that shaped a new political
generation of journalists. However, they had also been dope smokers and
anti-war in the late 1960s. The Daily Telegraph's chief political
correspondent in Canberra, Malcolm Farr, speaks for many of his
generation:
I remember going to a lot of rallies, both as a journalist and just as
an individualº I was in the last conscription
periodº I was at university through the
[Vietnam] moratoriumº the Whitlam government was
quite an eye-openerº
For Malcolm Farr and many of his colleagues in journalism the dismissal
of the Whitlam government in 1975 was an important influence, pushing them
either to the left or the right. But it wasn't just politics, other aspects
of the time had an impact. Whether or not they inhaled and snorted enough
to be considered Gonzo is a moot point.
In the 1960s Australian culture was beginning to emerge from a Menzian
time warp, imperial influence shifted from Britain to Australias new
partner, the USA. While Menzies is best remembered for his shameless and
sycophantic fealty to the British crown, his successor, Harold Holt,
proclaimed All the way with LBJ.
there's no doubt that the sixties mood for change had an impact on the
baby boomer generation. In October 1970 a wealthy and slightly eccentric
businessman, Gordon Barton, capitalised on this sentiment and published the
first issue of Nation Review. A magazine that was definitely
anti-establishment:
There were Vietnam marches and moratoriaº
and the stench of police corruption in the three eastern States was so high
even the pollies were finding it difficult to ignore it. The excesses of
hippiedom had begun to give way to the first murmurings of womens lib and
gay lib and friends of the earthº . And we were
young men with a great passion to create something new in Australian
journalismº (Walsh 1993: 7).
In response to the first issue the then NSW Premier R W Askin, wrote
that the publication was "quite attractive as a newspaper," but would
improve with "a little less cynicism and a little more objectivity on
various public issues." The arch conservative Askin was as tough and
cunning as an old dingo living on the edge of an outback town. Such wild
dogs sniff the wind and slink towards corruption. This was a sure sign that
Nation Review was living up to its motto, "like a ferret, lean and
nosey" (Walsh 1993: 15). Walsh himself is proud of the Reviews
bias. In Ferretabilia he writes:
It was a well-credentialled left-liberal paper, but too often it was
weighed down by its sense of its own seriousness and worthiness. Even the
humourº [was] high literary (Walsh 1993:
13).
One of the magazines political correspondents told how he had been
rolled in an ALP preselection battle for a Melbourne state seat. Niall
Brennans participant-observer account has the flavour of New
Journalisms personal and narrative style.
It was like a gathering of the chieftains, or a harvest festival after
a bad winter. Footscray Town Hall rang to the patter of jovial Labor Party
feet (Brennan in Walsh 1993: 8).
The Review continued to cover politics this way and on Anzac Day
1971 a piece by Mungo MacCallum, We that are Left shall grow old, so
rattled Labor stalwart Arthur Callwell that he felt it necessary to sue the
magazine for libel (Walsh 1993: 28). MacCallum's piece can be fairly
described as New Journalism in that it is highly opinionated and
iconoclastic towards the grand old men of the ALP parliamentary
left.
Far from being a grand old conscience, they have deteriorated into a
narrow and embittered gerontocracy, whose actions seem motivated by almost
anything except the desire to enhance the party's electoral prospects
(MacCallum 1993: 28).
In 1971 being different meant using "fuck" in the Review (Walsh
1993: 16), something that many mainstream dailies still refuse to do,
preferring to amend it to f**k, or f***. However, the f- word does not a Gonzo make. We have to look a
little more deeply into the soul of "The Ferret" to know for sure. On the
occasion of the magazines half-year birthday, when it was still called
The Sunday Review, New Journalism was far from the minds of the
editor and staff:
The Sunday Review is º witty and
abrasive commentary [and] is clearly descended from the historic traditions
of Australian journalism (in Walsh 1993: 20).
So was New Journalism active in Australia and who is the antipodean
equivalent of Hunter S. Thompson? It might not be too far stretched to
suggest it could be Evan Whitton, whose journalistic career began on the
Melbourne Truth. In a collection of his writing, Amazing Scenes:
Adventures of a Reptile of the Press, Whitton mentions Wolfe's New
Journalism as an influence. However, Whitton says since reporting has been
around since "about 120 AD," that perhaps it could be called
"neo-journalism" (1987: 13). Ed's now slumped a foot or so lower in the
easy chair, but despite (or perhaps because of) the Turkey his minds on
the game. "Hey Marty, I like this bit, but let's get real." I didn't
realise he'd been scribbling and drawing for hours. He hands me several
sheets of paper, mostly illegible, but with some nice cartoons and this
pithy comment scrawled across one page:
The lizard may have clawed its way out of the bag; but has no reason to get its frills in a knot. The easy way out is to warm your belly on the Federal Highway.
The Turkey's slurring his speech, but I try to get it down accurately.
"Maybe its because were also cynical and casual in our approach to politics, unlike America in the sixties, when everyone who wasn't stoned was uptight."
I think he's onto something and reach for my copy of Mungo MacCallum's
Australian Political Anecdotes, where I find the following, "the
cynicism with which the media and the public have regarded the whole
[political] process has produced an air of informality"( MacCallum 1994:
x). This in itself may be enough to explain why Gonzo was not a goer in
Australia.
Mungo MacCallum is my personal pick as Australia's answer to Thompson.
But when I finally get him on the phone I'm disappointed to hear he doesn't
think that Gonzo is a term applicable to Australian journalism. Certainly
not in the "drug-rattled" and "made up" sense it applied in sixties
America. Mungo tells me that the "factional" nature of much Gonzo appears
to contradict all that journalism is about -
truth telling.
MacCallum says that certainly the sixties were a period of change and
that Australian journalism had a "rebellious" streak and was "irreverent"
in that it wanted to "take apart" the social structure and see what was
really going on. However, he told me that at the time no one in Australia
was reading Tom Wolfe, or William Burroughs. Despite this, Nation
Review exhibits some strains New Journalism and perhaps at the far
reache's, fed on the flesh of Gonzo itself. what's next?
Most contemporary Australian journalism continues to worship
objectivity, even if it does contain opinion. Ninety-nine per cent of
political reporting is only churning the dominant ideology. It rarely, if
ever, goes outside the framework of parliamentary free-market liberal
democratic ideas. Unfortunately there's not much around today that wears
the Gonzo crown with any panache.
Ive asked Ed to take a look at Revolver, it has an interesting
way of involving the reporters in the stories, mainly band interviews. But
he's firmly of the opinion that, in the end, its just another music rag.
"What about Mindvomit?" I ask. He looks over the Revolver
column written by Chris Fleming, "yeah, its funny, but its not
reporting. Its good satire, but its not journalism." you're right
again Ed. We pull a pile of The Independent and my collection of
New Journalist down off the shelf, but after several hours we can't
find anything to celebrate there either. "It's gone," I call out to
Ed. "Extinct, like the Tasmanian Devil." As a last ditch attempt to
find something current and Gonzo, Ed's poring over The Republican.
He looks up from the floor, "Is this dead too?" "Yeah," I
reply. My hearts not in the chase any more. "It only lasted about four
issues. A shame, but no Gonzo there buddy." Richard Evans wrote a
bitter obituary for The Republican in the Media Alliance
magazine:
The worst thing that can come out of The Republican fiasco is
that it convinces people that an independent newspaper is an impossibility.
This is not trueº It just requires skill,
innovation, a bit of luck and a lot of cheek (Evans 1998: 19).
Ed opines that The Republican most likely bored itself to death
and I agree. "Worthy it is and Gonzo its not." Ed says he can't
believe that critical Australian journalism's so dead. "Well, there's
Eureka Street," I offer, but I'm not hopeful, "it's published by a
bunch of Jesuits in Melbourne." Ed's blasphemy shocks even this
lifelong atheist. "Sweet fucken Jesus, for God and Gonzo, hey Marty?
This country's gone straight to the friggin' dogs under that low lying
bastard Howard. Gimme the bottle!" Ed's shit-faced, but at least the
Turkey keeps him quiet.
Part 5: One crash-edit does not a Gonzo make.
Tanya's fax wars with Triple J.
Tabloid TV and a Generation of
Despair.
Her career ambition is to be to Gen X what Kerrie Anne Kennerly is to the blue rinse set.
Sarah MacDonald c1998.
"Does Gonzo infect the electronic media too?" When Myles phoned
he said it occurred to him that ABC youth radio station Triple J might be
Gonzo-on-the-air. "You know," he said, "they have that funny
news tag that sounds like the ABC theme with a warp in the tape loop."
"Im not sure, Myles," I held the phone close, trying to stall him
and thinking fast. "Id rather write about Hartley," I suggested.
"You know I have a fix on him." The professor was persistent.
"Well you know they say motherfucker and cocksucker on the news. Can
you do something on that?" Maybe, but this close to deadline? I'm too
old for JJJ these days, well outside their demographic, so I wouldn't know.
"What do you think about the Jays, Ed, are they Gonzo?" He takes
another sip of Turkey and looks a bit vacan't as he ponders the
question:
Yea gods! Think about the finer art of Gonzo, Marty. Are these not
the primary traits of [radio and television comedy duo] Roy and HG?
They may struggle to qualify as journalists, BUT Gonzo they are!!!! If the
style of Gonzo is throwing yourself into a situation and writing your way
out, Roy and HG do this on the radio. However, I guess there are two major
differences, which arguably take the edge off Roy and HG in terms of
politics. First, everyone knows they're characters, while Hunter S has
built his writing persona around himself. Second, Roy and HG trivialise the
important and make the trivial important, thereby focussing on the humour.
On the other hand Thompson takes the important to its darkest extremes. But
they are fucking Gonzo Martyº no doubt about
it.
Christ, Id never heard Ed so cogent, especially after nearly a
whole bottle of bourbon. "Yeah, OK Ed, calm down. Look, we know you're
excited about Roy and HG, but what about the rest of JJJ, particularly the
newsroom?" Ed's fuming now, bourbon-flavoured spittle forming around
his mouth. Steadying himself he manages to slur out a few more epithets:
"Triple Jay news and Gonzo? No bleedin way. They just fuck with things
to be cool - and cool they are!" I can feel
the scorn dripping down the back of my neck, Ed's close behind me, waving
his arms in extreme agitation. I glance around to make sure he's not going
to knock my head off and then turn back to the screen, fingers poised to
record his ranting:
Those guys are cool. that's for sure! So cool that we now have a
mainstream alternative market - and Triple Jay
is a fashion label for the bastard children of Generation X - who the admen and bean counters have turned into the
Generation of Despair.
Ed's eyes are brimming with tears. I can't tell if its the Turkey,
or pure emotion. Is this hard-bitten man, whos faced down hordes of jiving
teenagers in some of the states toughest schools, actually sobbing?
Jeezuz, this is scary! "Yeah, they have fucken' attitude," he's
almost spitting the words at me:
But Gonzo is MUCH MORE than attitudeº Gonzo has purpose. I don't see any purpose in a radio station that feeds on an angst-ridden cool culture.
Ed reaches for a piece of paper. Its on the pile I downloaded earlier from the JJJ website. "JJJ news claims to be independent and relevant to a younger audience, but what's this crap?" He reads from the sheet:
Sometimes fuming ñ but usually amused ñ º I arrive and settle down to digest the morning's
newsº and there they are: amazing stories from
all over Australia and the globe to be editedº
pastedº as well as slapped and tickled into
shape.
Ed's on a roll now: "Slap and fucking tickle! they're not
doing anything special. Just cogs in a big media machine. Its
disappointing Marty. But, shit, the truth often is."
he's right. On the surface Triple J can appear to be Gonzo, but the
news is pretty straightforward stuff. Most of it is taken straight from the
ABC's computer. For one thing, budget constraints limit the amount of
expensive original reporting that the JJJ staff can do. But you don't have
to believe me. Several of my students looked at JJJ news during seminars
for Specialty Reporting. Their overwhelming conclusion was that there's
really nothing new, imaginative or different in the news. Tanya even got a
fax from a Triple J producer who told her, "because you pestered me," that
the networks "qualitative research" rated the environment as the number
one audience concern, "before politics, sport, sex, drugs whatever
[sic]." The fax also says that JJJ staff "maintain an awareness by
listening/watching/reading other media," as well as the following free
advice:
Please pass on to your fellow students and your lecturers that
LISTENING to the radio and interpreting it yourself are also valuable
research methods (Rossiter 1998).
Yeah, well we did that and our conclusion is that if you want useful,
alternative information, you're wasting your time listening to JJJ! Though
it hasnt always been the case. Until the introduction of the national
network in 1990 the JJJ Sydney newsroom did produce more than two hours a
day of original current affairs material, as well as interesting and
informative spoken word programming throughout the day. But the purge of
talent at the end of that year, Helen Thomas, Tony Biggs and many others
(me amongst them), sealed the stations fate. Triple Js management
capitulated and handed their souls over to the suits and the bad hair
boys. The music was blanded out and The Drum silenced forever. It
still hurts and I sometimes have to scream:
Damn you sons of bitche's. Its not important that you fucked up my
life, I recovered. But I can never forgive you for destroying the life work
of many dedicated reporters and producers. You know who you are; I wonder
how you sleep at night!
Things were different in the early days, but today JJJ is a travesty of its former self. Under resourced thanks to the backward-looking policies of successive federal governments and staffed by hip young things with very little experience, Triple J cannot be taken seriously as a force in contemporary journalism. It seems that the reporters working the newsroom today don't even take themselves, or their craft, very seriously either. Heres what Ed and I found on the JJJ web pages, posted by the news staff themselves:
Finally at the last minute [I] dash into the news boothº I run inside, sit down square, pop on the phones,
catch my breathº and hope eternal I don't
mistakenly call the chief minister of the Northern Territoryº Sharon Stone.
It's bushfire season. I race into the news studio with 30 seconds to go.
I sat bolt upright in bed and realised I had to read the seven oclock
news in ten minutes.
I riseº showerº
clotheº and consume a few items to speed me on
my merry way to the Jay newsroom: strong coffeeº
colaº cappuccino flavoured chocolate coffee
beans and some guarana chewing gum.
Without looking over my shoulder I call out, "Shit, Ed, what would the good Doctor make of this tame excuse for substance abuse?" He doesn't respond. I look around. Too late, Ed's fallen full length on to the couch. His shallow breathing indicates the sleep of a troubled man. Oh well, I have to get this finished. I grab the Turkey bottle and take a deep swig, but there's not enough left to really space me out. Now I'm wishing I had the medicine bag packed for Thompson's trip to Las Vegas all those years ago:
"We had two bags of grass, 75 pellet's of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt-shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers º and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case
of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls" (Thompson 1993: 46).
As far as I can tell when JJJ does try to go beyond the mainstream news agenda, its not so much hard-hitting exposes, but lifestyle journalism (a staple of Hartley's Postmodern Journalism). The Morning Show, for example, lists several regular segments about "ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING."
This pot pourri includes, "why pubic hair is curly, why the economys collapsing and what's the latest musical craze in Botswana." Nope, if you're looking for Gonzo on the radio Professor, don't spin that dial to the Js. there's nothing there but wallpaper for the ears.
In the early 70s New Journalism did enjoy a brief, but worthwhile, stint on Australian television. However, it too has succumbed to the terrors of the Postmodern, in the form of vacuous tabloid TV.
In his foreword to Bill Peachs personal history of the now defunct ABC current affairs show, This Day Tonight, historian Ken Inglis describes some of the qualities exhibited by the progam, "intelligence, honesty, guts and good humour." Qualities that perhaps reflect the spirit of Gonzo in television format. Inglis adds to the mix, "a compound of irreverence and skepticism towards all holders of power" and he concludes, "TDT did more than any other program to make that change in the culture of public life." It might be fair to suggest that TDTs signature tune alone is a clue to the programs difference, "a new sound, gently percussive, syncopated, sprightly," especially when compared to the ABCs "sonorous Majestic Fanfare," which was the news theme in those days (Inglis in Peach 1992). Hey Myles, maybe you were onto something with that Triple J music thing. Its interesting that Bill Peach was also a contributor to Nation Review.
Part 6: We inter the corpse of Australia's New Journalist and discover Postmodernism is an X Files plot.
Ed finally succumbs.
It's perfectly obvious that information has become a form of garbage, and ourselves garbage collectors.
Postman c1995
Neil Postman says there's an information glut and that journalists sort the rubbish, "what is on the front page, determined by editors, is a statement of what they think an educated personº should know about" (Harwood & Postman c1995). The point he's really making is that the media is supposed to help inform a democratic society and assist citizens to make informed decisions on matters of public interest. New Journalism certainly believed it had this function, but I don't think the sort of Postmodern Journalism pimped by Hartley goes anywhere near it.
Harwood makes a plea for journalists to do more reporting, by which he means going out and finding the story. He says journalists can only make themselves "increasingly relevant by having a deeper understanding of the communities in which [they] operateº get out of the newsroom and talk to people more" (Harwood & Postman c1995). To me this sounds like a plea for a revival of New Journalism, especially when Harwood adds, "but asking very different questions that elicit peoples stories so you can understand the meaning of peoples lives and what they're struggling with" (Harwood & Postman c1995).
On the surface there is some similarity between the New Journalism of the 1960s and the Postmodern Journalism of the 1990s. Both claim a birthright in literary journalism; both claim to represent a break with journalistic orthodoxy and a blurring of the non-fiction - fiction demarcation line. But that's about as far as
it goes. New Journalism was about exposing the ugly side of life, digging up the corpses and provoking readers into action. On the other hand, Postmodernism is tarted up carpet-bagging and intellectual posturing, devoid of insight or anything worthwhile. Postmodernism is trash TV; A Current Affair, Oprah Winfrey and Australia's Funniest Home Videos! "And so we go for the cheap shot, and television for an even cheaper shot. And the result is that were all tired with the consequences" (Frankel in Harwood & Postman c1995).
In its heyday during the late 1960s and early 1970s New Journalism was very confrontationist. On all the major social issues of the day new journalism took a radical position. Though, as Wolfe says, we shouldn't confuse the New Journalists with the "the technically old-fashioned sort" who wrote for the New Left (Wolfe 1973: 43). This is where Australia's own New Journalist really fits into the picture. The magazine lasted for 12 years (1972- 1984) and 44 issues, but it didn't promote new journalism so much as the New Left. Though it did print some work by journalism students at NSWIT in the mid 1980s, including some of mine, New Journalist was an organising tool for rank and file activists in the Australian Journalists Association.
Gonzo is an extremist form that spoke to and for a generation that was deeply suspicious of authority and the military-industrial complex. On the other hand, Hartley's insipid examples of so-called Postmodern political journalism are no more than the incorporation of once oppositional discourses into the commodity fetishism of late capitalism. Like the Chameleon, Pomo journalism changes its colours to blend into a bright and gaudy environment. In Hartley's example the black revolution in South Africa is reduced to a fashion accessory for the nouveau riche in western Europe. New Journalism was speaking to an angry generation looking for an alternative to the system. Vogue speaks directly to the rich and powerful who are the system and Postmodernists speak in tongues, intelligible only to other initiates.
Yossi Melman got it right in his response to Richard Harwood: "You talked about superfluous information, garbage. We have it already with television and cable television" (Melman in Harwood & Postman c1995). Unfortunately the Postmodernists celebrate this dumbing down of information:
Tabloid televisionº confronts us with a taste of our televisual futureº blurring of the
private and public realm, [blending] information and entertainmentº tabloid television enacts many of the central dilemmas of the information revolution we are currently undergoing (Lumby & ONeil 1994: 160).
There's that word revolution again being used in a technological, rather than a social sense. But like all clever Postmodernists, these two have an escape clause. If you agree then you're obviously a "pre-eminent Australian cultural studies theorist" (p.155). But, if you disagree with their superficial analysis, "which mimics the way people consume popular culture" (p.155), then you must be one of the "pretentious little class of schoolteachers and academics" that "pisses me off" (Gerald Stone quoted in Lumby & ONeil1994: 151). "Hey Gerry, do I piss you off? I hope so!" At this point I'm so pissed off myself that I have to shake Ed awake and get a comment. he's no use at all. "Tell 'em to get fucked, Marty," is all he can manage.
Postmodern Journalism is the opposite of community building. As Neil Postman says, "the fact is most of our modern media have been privatizing experiencesº Everything is moving us away from a sense of co-present community life." This idea is welcomed by McKenzie Wark who wrote "we no longer have roots, we have aerials" in Virtual Geography (1994). As Postman says, a virtual community is "something quite, quite different from what we would normally think of as community life" (Harwood & Postman c1995).
Postmodern Journalism is a bastard child, but thankfully New Journalism is neither mother nor father. "You were right, Gerry. I owe you one." Postmodern Journalism is the unlovely offspring of Wolfe's "Neo-Fabulists". Its a hybrid of fable, myth and fabulous consumerism. The bastard has got parents though. One resides in a Hollywood studio, the other in a Wall Street penthouse. They meet only occasionally, usually to argue about whos going to collect royalties on the work of the bastard. The child is grown up now and, high on crack, sells its worn-out soul to the highe'st bidder. This work, while of little redeeming social value, does keep the parents in the style to which theyve become accustomed. They, not the offspring, are the real bastards!
Phew, Ive made it to the second last paragraph, with minutes to spare. My great pal, Ed, is snoring quietly on the sofa. I've just covered him with a blanket. An empty bourbon bottle lies between us. He holds that dangerous knife so tightly I thought I'd break his fingers trying to remove it. As Ed falls into an alcoholic stupor, I can't resist recording his last words on the subject. "Damn snake, it'll bite you every time. Unless you kill the fucker first."
History will judge us my friend. Sleep well.
Bail, K. (1998). Pers. Comm. 11 June. Kathy Bail is
the editor of HQ magazine.
Brennan, N. (1993). Running for a seat. In Richard Walsh (Ed.),
Ferretabilia: Life and Times of Nation Review. University of
Queensland: Brisbane. (First published in Sunday Review, 11 October
1970)
Conley, D. (1997). The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to
Journalism. OUP: Melbourne.
Evans, R. (1998). Independence at a cost. The Alliance Magazine.
MEAA: 18-19.
Farr, M. (1997). Pers. Comm. 30 September 1997. Malcolm Farr is
a senior political journalist in the Canberra Press Gallery.
Hahn, M. (1997). Writing on the Wall: an interview with Hunter S.
Thompson. Atlantic Unbound.
http://theatlantic.com/atlantic/atlweb/graffiti/hunter.htm
Hartley, J. (1996). Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular
Culture. Arnold: London.
Harwood, R. & Postman, N. (c1995). What makes journalism
different? http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/Nieman/TPostman.html
Love, Rob (Ed.) (1993). The best of Rolling Stone: 25 years
of journalism on the edge. Doubleday: New York.
Lumby, C & ONeil, J. (1994). Tabloid Television. In Julianne
Schultz (Ed.), Not just another business: Journalists, Citizens and the
Media. National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University and
Pluto Press: Sydney. pp.149-160.
MacCallum, M. (1993). We that are Left shall grow old. In Richard Walsh
(Ed.), Ferretabilia: The Life and Times of Nation Review.
QUP: Brisbane, pp. 28-29. (First published in Nation Review, 25
April 1971)
MacCallum, M. (Ed.) (1994). Mungo MacCallums Australian Political
Anecdotes. OUP: Melbourne.
MacCallum, M. (1998) Pers. Comm. 20 April 1998. Mungo MacCallum
is a freelance writer who lives on the NSW north coast.
MacDonald, S. (c1998). Triple J home page. http://www.abc.net.au
Morcombe, M. (1985). An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Australian
Wildlife. Reed Books: Frenchs Forest. p.17.
Othitis, C. (1997). The beginnings and concept of Gonzo
journalism. http://www.gonzo.org The Great Thompson Hunt
Othitis, C (c1997). 20 years of Rolling Stone.
http://www.gonzo.org/wsmith/articles/rs20.html
Peach, B. (1992). This Day Tonight: How Australian Current Affairs
TV Came of Age. ABC Books: Sydney.
Rossiter, T. (1998). The environment round. Unpublished class
presentation at the University of Western Sydney Nepean.
Thompson, H. S, (1993). Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In Robert Love
(Ed.), The best of Rolling Stone: 25 years of journalism on the
edge. Doubleday: New York. pp. 46-60. (First published in Rolling
Stone 95, November 11, 1971)
Thompson, H. S. (1994). Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
72. Flamingo: London. (First published in 1973)
Walsh, B. (1993). Ferretabilia: Life and Times of Nation Review.
University of Queensland: Brisbane.
Wark, M. (1994). Virtual Geography. Indiana University Press:
Bloomington
Wark, M. (1998). Its time to smash the sixties. The Australian
Higher Education Supplement June 3: 36.
Wark, M. (c1998). Pop Politics. 21C #25: 27-30.
Webb, A. (1998). Street press as a type of Speciality Reporting.
Unpublished class presentation at the University of Western Sydney
Nepean.
Wolfe, T. (1973). The New Journalism. With an anthology edited
by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson. Harper & Row: New York.
