“It was a dark and stormy night”

Abstract

An increasing number of American newspaper journalists are engaging in the practice of narrative literary journalism in the pages of daily newspapers, doing so because they and their editors sense the limitations implicit to the objectivist paradigm so long dominant in journalism practice. More traditional storytelling, then – with character, complication, descriptive color, plot, and resolution – is returning to the front page after being largely absent or marginalized for nearly a century, its increasing publication reflecting a shift in critical perception in the newspaper establishment as to what constitutes journalism. Moreover, the shift reveals a change in how the staffs of daily newspapers publishing such narratives view readers – no longer as passively receiving what is served them, but as actively engaged in creating their own meaning. This article explores the evidence of this shift in critical perspective, and reasons why the narrative model is increasingly appearing in the daily report.