Gay Talese And His Chinese Followers Revival Of A New Journalism Writing Style

In recent years, features like Beijing after zero and 20 million Ways to Die has stand out because of large amounts of data and small scenes. Their immediate ancestor is Gay Talese, an American journalist and writer cover. This paper is trying to summarize this kind of writing style and improvement by Chinese journalists, and to explore a new way for news writing.I have read and analyzed Gay Talese’s books and articles, find that his breakthrough is to apply novel skill to journalism, such as conflict and mystery, dialogue and psychological description. All of them are based on meticulous observation and in-depth investigation. The most special part of his articles is full description of scene and large amounts of data, which makes him many fans in China. In his most famous New York series articles, many small scenes break through time and space, bring readers travel with him. The function of data is not only providing information, but also aesthetic feeling in reading.Among imitators in Chinese news works, the most famous are Sanlitun Fragment, Another Beijing, Beijing after zero, 20 million Ways to Die, and Beijing in Haze. To find out writing process and writing method of these features, the second part of this paper uses in-depth interview method with these reporters for magazine. Full description of scene and large amounts of data have been used to fullest, at the same time, they made improvement and innovation based on domestic reality and media environment. First, they interviewed many people and collected enough materials previous to writing. Second, they chose curious topic and visualized the data, making the articles more readable.Old posts by Gay Talese in the 60 s won the new life because of China reporter’s attention and imitation. There are many reasons why Gay Talese is getting attention. First, under the pressure of competition, newspapers and magazines need to seek fresh report ways. Second, Chinese journalist team is boundary between journalists and writers. Third, Chinese readers feel the fresh reading experience with this western presentation style.Talese stylistics made positive meanings for Chinese character report and description of one city. More importantly, this writing style promoted the group of writer-type journalists, because it need superior writing skills.