The longer the better? Calibrating truth claims in literary journalism

摘要

The revival of long-form journalism has provoked considerable optimism in an otherwise uncertain climate of news media disruption and convergence. But, exciting as the latest boom in a much-loved sub-genre of non-fiction may be, the new wave confronts the same critical and ethical challenges as its earlier iterations. In recent years, claims of inaccuracy, misrepresentation, appropriation and bias have been levelled at authors of commercially successful narrative non-fiction books. In this article, the interplay of literary and journalistic elements and practices is examined in literary journalism, a hybrid form of narrative that uses literary techniques in an effort to convey "deeper perspectives" than is possible in news reports (Sims, 1995, p. 19). Three works of book-length narrative non-fiction by well-known Australian authors -Helen Garner's This house of grief: the story of a murder trial (2014a); Nine parts of desire: the hidden world of Islamic women (1994) by Ger-aldine Brooks; and Anna Funder 's Stasiland (2003) - are assessed for their journalistic qualities with reference to criteria posited as defining by Lounsberry (1990), Kovach and Rosenstiel (2007), Kramer (1995) and Ricketson (2014). The effect of research methods and narration on the analytical aspects of the texts is then considered by comparing the author's aims with the outcomes and conclusions of their inquiries.