
Gonzo Journalism in the Modern Era
When Hunter S. Thompson published the first gonzo article “The Kentucky Derby is Decedent and Depraved” in 1970, he flipped the way that journalism can function. Thompson brazenly rejected foundational principles of modern journalism such as the erasure of the author and claimed objectivity in favor of a literary, personal accounting of events to create a novel lens that lets the reader understand and interpret niche communities. Despite gonzo journalism’s lack of claimed obj