America’s Finest Journalists Reveal Their Methods for Pursuing Great Stories

A glimpse into the journalists’ approach for generating ideas, their research routines, and interviewing methods.

This article is based on the book “The New New Journalism” by Robert S. Boynton, who interviewed nineteen practitioners of the literature of fact. Occasionally, I have used the wisdom found in William Zinsser’s classic “On Writing Well” and John McPhee’s “Draft №4”.

Americans always had a great need to explore and express the force and magnitude of their national experience — The American Experience. The curiosity about the cultural diversity, a fictional current that sweeps beneath its vast territories, has surfaced stories of larger-than-life characters as well as the simple, ordinary life.

The Literature of Fact in the USA

Between 1870 and 1900, the nation of seventy-five million absorbed twelve million immigrants — most of them entering the USA through the Golden Door in New York. Traditional journalism was no longer sufficient to portray the changes in American life. This cultural mosaic required journalists to apply prodigious research and diligent reporting and to use a narrative form that helped to convey the overwhelming…