Abstract:

The term of literary journalism in its basic definition can be described as a narrative method reflecting the facts and factual events by employing the literary form and techniques. Hence, starting from the point of intersection between journalism and literature it is possible to interpret short stories/reportage/novels that are particularly combining literary and journalist identities thus creating a nonfiction and fact based texts that can be considered as works of literary journalism. The term of literary journalism means not only presenting journalism through the literary language and structure but also covering the participation of a literary journalist into the facts and events as a practitioner and expressing the experience in a subjective way. The first appearance, application and its rich development of the term happens mainly in the USA. As mass journalism started to spread during the first half of the 19th century, news and narratives of literary character began to appear in these kinds of newspapers. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the time when American literature was largely dominated by the movement of Realism, the coalition of literature and journalism produced successful works in the field of literary journalism. Literary representatives of this period like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Upton Sinclair and Ernest Hemingway were also professional reporters and journalists thus preferred the form close to literary journalism rather than classical novel or other literary genre. During the 20th century, particularly the second half of it, the term of literary journalism became directly/openly used in the literary, journalist and academic circles thus entered their agenda. Writers like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Hersey and Gay Talese combined literature and journalism and created successful works. The target of this article is to describe literary journalism that is still a new term in our country and to evaluate its range, American examples, and the difference between literary journalism and classical journalism. Finally, the article aims to place literary journalism within the actual/global concept in the sphere of journalism and communication as well as to discuss its potential future.

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