All About That Fiction

Bennet ends his article by saying journalism is changing, but it shouldn't take a new name; it can still be called magazine writing. He seems to accomplish an idea of what "new journalism" looks like and how successful it is. Basically, new journalism contains elements of fiction storytelling, new techniques, and old values. Readers want good articles regardless of length, and they want to be able to access them in print or digitally.
A flashpoint in Bennet's article is Stephen King's "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation." This example illuminates what nonfiction storytelling is like. It's dramatic, truthful, and sad.
Bennet's article is useful because it shows how "new journalism" succeeds with readers. A limit in the article is verbosity. Bennet doesn't really communicate his main thoughts until the last three paragraphs. To be more specific, sometimes his article comes off as overly academic with long sentences and confusing syntax.
The video "How is Social Media Changing Journalism?" focuses more on journalism reaching a wider audience. A drawback here is that anyone can make a blog, post something, and then call it news. But blogging is great in starting the conversation, like through Twitter, and also keeping the conversation going, like on Facebook.
The video warns about consumer responsibility, which ties back to the "anyone can blog" idea. Someone can go to school, get a college degree, work for all kinds of magazines, and call herself a journalist. Likewise, some anonymous citizen with no journalistic background can make her own blog and call herself a journalist. If you're a doctor or a lawyer, your degrees say so, but journalists just need a platform.
Bennet mentions that new journalism tactics attract a wider audience, which is also what the writers in the video said. Readers can access digital information instantly, but is this always a good thing? These awesome, long articles like "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation" are available digitally, and even though readers can access them, are they happy with the visual format? Many news sites have advertisements and distracting links flanking the sides of the article. In print form, the article suffers from the same problem, but to a less extent.
A print article could have tiny interest blocks or ads, but mostly the ads are in between the pages of the text, and a reader only has to flip ahead to continue the story. There's no escaping ads on the digital platform unless a reader subscribes to the website. The video referenced the new digital "environment," and it's a distracting place.
Bennet argues that new journalism is basically nonfiction storytelling, and there's another term for that--Literary Journalism. This is the best kind of nonfiction writing because it reads with the richness of fiction imagery, drama, and characters while the story itself is all true. Literary journalism connects better with readers because it offers an emotional level that the inverted pyramid simply cannot produce. This kind of writing is limited to the bigger stories, but it's through this format that readers can connect subjectively with the author.