Literary Journalism

At the end of the class, the students will be

able to:
• define Literary
Journalism;
• idenfity notable
practitioners in Literary
Journalism;
• differentiate straight
journalism and literary
journalism; and;
• create own literary
journalism from a
straight news.
 LOOK: Duterte marks 76th birthday with a
simple meal by
Germelina Lacorte

DAVAO CITY, Davao del Sur, Philippines — A photo

released by Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go on Sunday
shows President Rodrigo Duterte blowing a candle stuck
into a mound of rice, instead of a cake, on a plate in what
appears to be a simple meal to mark his 76th birthday.

“He is blowing a candle just now,” Go posted in Filipino on

his Facebook account at 6 a.m. on Sunday, showing the
president wearing a T-shirt and shorts blowing a candle,
near a plate with some leftover pancit canton on the table.
 Literary Journalism
Literary journalism is sometimes called
“immersion journalism” because it requires a
closer, more active relationship to the subject
and to the people the literary journalist is
exploring. Like journalistic writing, the literary
journalism piece should be well-researched,
focus on a brief period of time, and
concentrate on what is happening outside of
the writer’s small circle of personal experience
and feelings.
Unlike the other Creative Nonfiction forms
(Autobiography, Biography, Travelogue, and
such), Literary Journalism deals with another
personality because it requires some research.
Popular Practitioners in Literary Journalism

• Nick Joaquin
• Yasmin Arquiza
• Criselda Yabes
• John Iremil E. Terodoro
 Nick Joaquin
“Quijano de Manila”
His reportage pieces clearly
deviate from straight journalism
with his employment of literary
devices and elements of fiction.
He said that literature and
journalism do not have old
distinction, because both genres
can be fused in order to
produce something more
creative and interesting.
• Yasmin Arquiza- specializes in environmental
reporting.
• Criselda Yabes- specializes on the Philippine
military and Mindanao peace issues.
• John Iremil E. Teodoro- specializes on cultural
reportage.
 JOURNALISM VERSUS LITERATURE?
by Nick Joaquin
The newsman cannot afford to be eccentric.

Eccentricity is such a temptation to the creative

writer because he tends to be self-indulgent. In
the Philippines especially, where so few read him,
he may be tempted to indulge in his fancies and
foibles. He feels under no obligation to
communicate clearly because he knows that his
readers are mostly his own fellow writers and that
he can play games with them.
But what journalism demands is responsible
writing. The reporter is duty-bound to
communicate—and to communicate as sensibly as
possible. He must not play games with the reading
public: communication is a serious business. But
too many creative writers believe that, if
communication is the business of journalism,
literature is different, because the business of
literature is expression—or, to be more specific,
self-expression. And here the responsibility is only
to oneself.
In other words, the mind of man is no longer
synonymous with imagination. The chief wheels
now in that intellect is what we call information.
We do not want fancies we want facts. And to
modern eyes, literature is mere fancy but
journalism is brutal fact. And we want our facts
as brutal as possible. We want straight news we
want information.
 Generating Ideas in Literary Journalism

One way to incorporate literary journalism into

an introductory or intermediate level course is
simply to have students write personal essays
first. Then the students can go back and research
the facts behind the personal experiences related
in their essays. They can incorporate historical
data, interviews, or broaden the range of their
personal essay by exploring the cultural or
political issues hinted at in their personal essays.
A teenage killer’s eerie tweets she
sent after stabbing friend to
death: 'We really did go on three'
Lauren Effron and Gail Deutsch
2 August 2019
Sixteen-year-old Skylar Neese never made it back home
after she snuck out of her Star City, West Virginia, home
after midnight on July 6, 2012, to meet up with her two
friends, Rachel Shoaf and Sheila Eddy, both of whom were
the same age.

After Neese went missing, her mother said Eddy told her
that the three of them had been driving around town that
night getting high before she and Shoaf had dropped Neese
off at the end of the road from her apartment building so
that Neese could sneak back in. The surveillance camera on
Neese's apartment building captured her sneaking out and
getting into a car at around 12:30 a.m.
Trial By Twitter
(excerpt)

HOLLY MILLEA
SEP 17, 2014
Deep in the digital diaries of three lovely girls, a
fatal disconnect occurred. What their followers
had not seen between the lines was the
vanishing of morality, reality, and then, Skylar
Neese.
Sixteen-year-old Skylar Neese never made it back
home after she snuck out of her Star City, West
Virginia, home after midnight on July 6, 2012, to meet
up with her two friends, Rachel Shoaf and Sheila Eddy,
both of whom were the same age.

Deep in the digital diaries of three lovely girls, a

fatal disconnect occurred. What their followers
had not seen between the lines was the
vanishing of morality, reality, and then, Skylar
Neese.
July 4, 2012, was a scorcher in Star City, West Virginia—a
prelude to what would become the hottest month that year.
While some escaped the heat by watching The Amazing
Spider-Man or Magic Mike in the cool dark at the nearby
Morgantown Mall or swimming in the Monongahela River, 16-
year-old Skylar Neese was moping around her family's
apartment, beyond bored. Feeling ditched by her friends
who'd gone away together, she tweeted her frustration: sick of
being at fucking home. thanks "friends", love hanging out with
you all too.

"I said, 'Skylar, why don't you read a book?' " recalls her
mother, Mary, sitting in the family room, gesturing toward the
full bookcase. "She devoured the Twilight books. She was just
getting into the classics. She loved Great Expectations."
With bright blue eyes (a gift from her mother), ivory skin,
and a dimpled chin, Skylar was an honors student at
University High School heading into her junior year, excelling
in two subjects she couldn't stand: math and science. By July
she'd already gotten a jump on the required summer
reading: Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others and
Saul Bellow's 1959 surrealist novel Henderson the Rain King,
in which the protagonist speaks in pitch-perfect Twitter
verse: "If I don't get carried away I never accomplish
anything…Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among
people and there's the devil to pay." And every teenager's cri
de coeur: "I want, I want, I want, I want, I want!" Skylar
wanted to be out with her best friends. Before going to sleep
that night she tweeted: stress will be the death of me.
What makes Literary Journalism different from
Straight Journalism?