To what can we trace the origins of the distinctly American mode of
journalism? It's a long tradition best characterized by writers such as
Mark Twain, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer,
Hunter S. Thompson, Thoreau, and Upton Sinclair. But what do these
writers represent and what does the quickly deteriorating state of
journalism suggest about this tradition's future?
More so than most American writers I've found the ones I listed above
to be captivated by the constant search for Americana. In their careers
they set to explore the lives of their fellow countryman as a means to
figure an entire nation. And they were fearless. They left behind the
convenient and the comfortable and instead chose the unexplored and the
mysterious, the dangerous and the difficult. What is my neighbor about?
They asked and they asked and when they could they wrote back to us
with answers gleamed from the far stretches of their travels. How does
our neighbor live and what does that suggest about the way I live?
American Journalism at its finest has set out to capture the American
dream as it exists in all of us. Of our always westward bound spirit.
And should this mode of journalism disappear maybe it'll be that we'll
forget how to capture the American dream for ourselves. What these
writers have created is the tradition of the American Dream itself.
It's they who have documented the stories and they who have found all
the sparkling facets of our nation's spirits in as far away places as
Alaska and post-WWI Europe, in remote woodsy cabins, and in prison, in
carnivals and motorcycle gangs, Las Vegas and decrepit factories, in
the mayor's office and the local DJ booth.
There's so much to learn about our country from our journalism. It
points us to the people that inhabit so many different societies and
cultures and occupations and neighborhoods and environments and all
inside the very same borders all of us call home. There's insights to
the American Spirit on every block and yet there are so few writers
dedicated to finding and featuring these stories. But that this is an
American tradition at all is testament to the very tenants of our
Nation. That all men are created equal and each is deserving of his own
Odyssey, his place in history. Should this tradition be lost might it
come to pass that what has bound this nation together for these almost
two and a half centuries might just slip into obscurity and be
forgotten? We owe it to ourselves to find our own stories written into
the lives of our neighbors.
