As I understand it, what makes new journalism new is the application of fiction techniques in the telling of news stories. Techniques such as rising action in the story arc, narrative hooks at the end of segments, concentration on a central character, and especially a focus on conflict. I'm not sure how other fiction writers feel, but the obsessive use of these techniques by the MSM is really pissing me off.
See, if you are good enough at storytelling, you can make a CPA's lunch break compelling. That doesn't make it news. I understand the desire to make news more attractive to the average reader or viewer, to pique their interest and keep them engaged, but the MSM has made storytelling technique more important than the story.
Originally used to deliver complex news in an understandable and interesting format, the use of fiction technique has exacerbated the deterioration of news quality, depth and insight. Events that more easily fit the new template, especially on television, found their way on air, while more and more often complex news stories that required lengthy and nuanced explanation were eschewed or given short shrift.
Thank Truman Capote. His true crime book In Cold Blood was probably the first, but clearly the best of this new kind of journalism. Capote was a fine writer and knew story structure well. In Cold Blood reads like a great novel, was a runaway best seller and riveting example of the power of fiction techniques for ordering and presenting news. Still, it was only the story of a robbery/homicide. It wasn't genocide or war or corruption on a national scale or a street battle over civil rights or a bloody coup d'etat. It just FELT that important. There was no way that news editors could ignore the efficacy of this powerful new approach to presenting events.
But it didn't take long for the hacks to abuse and misuse "new journalism," finding the stories that worked the techniques best, rather than the stories we needed to hear as citizens. So we get missing white girl stories with a bad guy, seedy mug shot and all. We get "interviews" where guests of differing opinions are forced into artificial circumstances that put them in conflict, with the host/narrator guiding the narrative structure to force confrontation if it isn't happening naturally. We get false equivalence, where one side of an argument is demonstrably wrong, a distortion or flat out lie, but presented on an equal footing with a reasonable argument because equal foes lead to more intense conflict.
Ultimately, the highest calling of a storyteller is not just to entertain by sensationalizing, titillating or appealing to the prurient, but to make sense of the world, of life. That the techniques I and other fiction writers employ in that effort have been appropriated by hacks to fill cable news airtime with helicopter chases of child-support scofflaws and ginned-up local crime stories has me ready to strangle a tooth-capped afternoon teleprompter jockey. That should give 'em a week of "news."