What was termed New Journalism reached critical mass in the 1960s, though Joseph Mitchell and A.J. Liebling and others had been doing it for decades. The colorful writing appeared prominently in the New York Herald Tribune, New York (which was born of the Trib), Esquire and numerous other periodicals. The style varied, but, oh, there was style. “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’: Eyewitness Report By Tom Wolfe,” was the New York article, published in its February 14, 1972 issue, that defined the liberation of ink-stained wretches after it had overthrown the accepted order. An excerpt in which Wolfe recalls the furious work ethic behind the birth of the new:

“The Herald Tribune assigned me split duties, like a utility infielder’s. Two days a week I was supposed to work for the city desk as a general assignment reporter, as usual. The other three days I was supposed to turn out a weekly piece of about 1,500 words for the Herald Tribune’s new Sunday supplement, which was called New York. At the same time, following the success of ‘There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmm) . . . . .’—I was also cranking out stories for Esquire. This setup was crazy enough to begin with. I can remember flying to Las Vegas on my two regular days off from the Herald Tribune to do a story for Esquire—’Las Vegas!!!!’—and winding up sitting on the edge of a white satin bed in a Hog-Stomping Baroque suite in a hotel on the Strip—in the décor known as Hog-Stomping Baroque there are 400-pound cut-glass chandeliers in the bathrooms—and picking up the phone and dictating to the stenographic battery of the Trib city desk the last third of a story on demolition derbies in Long Island for New York—’Clean Fun at Riverhead’—hoping to finish in time to meet a psychiatrist in a black silk mohair suit with brass buttons and a shawl collar, no lapels, one of the only two psychiatrists in Las Vegas County at that time, to take me to see the casualties of the Strip in the state mental ward out Charleston Boulevard. What made it crazier was that the piece about the demolition derbies was the last one I wrote that came anywhere close to being 1,500 words. After that they started climbing to 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 words. Like Pascal, I was sorry, but I didn’t have time to write short ones. In nine months in the latter part of 1963 and first half of 1964 I wrote three more long pieces for Esquire and twenty for New York. All of this was in addition to what I was writing as a reporter for the Herald Tribune city desk two days a week. The idea of a day off lost all meaning. I can remember being furious on Monday, November 25, 1963, because there were people I desperately needed to talk to, for some story or other, and I couldn’t reach them because all the offices in New York seemed to be closed, every one. It was the day of President Kennedy’s funeral. I remember staring at the television set . . . morosely, but for all the wrong reasons.”

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The New York Herald Tribune for sale in Paris: