Frank Sinatra Has A Cold - Influence On New Journalism

Influence On New Journalism

The article was an instant sensation. The journalist Michael Kinsley has said, "It's hard to imagine a magazine article today having the kind of impact that article and others had in those days in terms of everyone talking about it purely on the basis of the writing and the style."

After Tom Wolfe popularized the term "New Journalism" in his 1973 anthology The New Journalism, Talese's piece became widely studied and imitated. Vanity Fair called it "the greatest literary-nonfiction story of the 20th century."

The piece is often contrasted to modern magazine profiles in which the writers spend little time with their subjects or when writers fabricate elements of their story, such as Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, or Janet Cooke.

Talese has come to reject the label of "New Journalism" for this reason. He told NPR: "The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that's where I wanted to part company. I came up with the New York Times as a copy boy and later on became a reporter and I so revered the traditions of the Times in being accurate."

The story continues to receive acclaim and is cited by Talese as one of his best works. The story, which continues to be widely read, has been republished in multiple anthologies.