What is the point of journalism?  Is it to put us there by giving us images and descriptions?  If so, then journalism serves the same purpose as literature, and it's easy to see how the two fit together so perfectly.  When an individual sits down to read a novel or a book of poems, he or she temporary escapes his or her life by becoming absorbed into the book.  The images and descriptions used within literature mentally take the reader away to another place.  Literature and journalism have intersected greatly throughout history.  Evidence of such intersection can be found within Colonial America, Antebellum America, Postbellum America, and Modern American journalism and literature.  Four American writers including Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, and Truman Capote felt compelled to use different literary genres as devices for reporting front page news as well as lifestyle news.  Capturing the time and the event was easy for these literary journalist, and they found a way to enjoy the best of both worlds by intertwining journalism and literature.

Benjamin Franklin was a writer of the Colonial Period who used essays such as his "Silence Dogood" essays to report the "talk of the town."  It is speculated that he may have listened to townspeople for information to report in these essays.  Some critics, however, feel that these essays were  based upon fictional characters that Franklin invented in order to bring about social change.  For example, in his essay "Death of a Drunk" there is a hidden theme that comes across to the reader like a moral message.  The message is "don't drink or this could happen to you."  As a reporter, he tried to give the reader of this essay information about the who, what, when, where, and how.  This is definitely a journalistic quality.  Presenting some theme in a piece of work such as he did in this essay, however, is a literature technique used in short stories, novels, and poetry; therefore, he was mixing his journalism style of writing with his literature style of writing.  A reporter's job involves giving the public the facts.  It is very uncharacteristic to present moral lessons or themes in a news article unless it appears in the editorial section.  Maybe his characters such as the drunk were fictional or maybe they really did exist and Franklin just simply decided to use town gossip as a source to help report the news.  Either way, Franklin was using literature to report information from his own perspective.  While working as a writer, Benjamin Franklin also published the Poor Richard's Almanack which contained a combination of both news and literature.  The Almanack gave information about the weather and holiday dates for the month it was issued; however, it also provided maxims or inspirational thoughts which were quoted by many people from his time.  Once again, Franklin published a single source of information that presented both journalism and literature working together in order to achieve his goals.

Mark Twain, a writer of the Antebellum Period, was another literary journalist who intertwined journalism and literature.  In his novel Roughing It, he included several chapters that read like short stories, and each chapter read like a short report.  Throughout the book, Twain followed the popular themes of his time.  He explored the American Frontier and Native Americans.  He also reported or presented his perspective of nature and truth.  The book gave detailed images and descriptions of the West to the extent that it sounded as if he were trying to capture the West for the reader who had never been there during that time.  He tried to capture the real truth of the West.  Many people during his time were bombarded with information about how wonderful the West was and how they could each start a new life in the land of opportunity.  Twain presented a different twist to this popular belief out East.  He presented the idea that this was only true if one worked hard and endure some discomfort.  He achieved this by using sensationalism.  His images and descriptions of the West and her tall tales created an emotional response within his readers.  Sensationalism is really a literary technique that was used by many journalist including Benjamin Franklin in order to stir emotion.

Moving into the Modern Period, literary journalist such as Carl Sandburg and Truman Capote brought journalism and literature together in unique ways.  Carl Sandburg chose to use literature as an avenue for reporting the news just as Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain did.  Benjamin Franklin's avenue was the essay, and Mark Twain used the novel to report news and truth.  For Sandburg, it was poetry.  In his poem "Mill-Doors", Sandburg captured the time by focusing on wage slavery and the injustices of the world.  Just like Benjamin Franklin, he tried to bring about social change by using sensationalism. Truman Capote wrote novels about real events that read like investigative reports.  In his novel In Cold Blood, he gave the dates of incidents and the exact times of events.  He also presented the facts of those events in chronological order.  He quoted people in interviews and just like a journalist, he tried to present both sides of every story.  He tried to substantiate each suspect's story by presenting the facts that he obtained through investigative reporting.  It is obvious that the writer of the book was a reporter or had been a reporter at some point in his life.  He also identified individuals who spoke and remained very objective throughout the novel.

In short, journalism and literature have each traveled different roads because they are different forms of writing, but some journalist have managed to bring the two together.  Some journalist have chosen to take subject matter from journalism and put it in the form of literature.  Others, like Carl gSandburg, have taken literature and made it into a form of journalism by publishing poems in newspapers such as the Chicago Evening Post.  Scholars of literary journalism should all agree that journalism and literature have not just intersected.  They have, at some points in history, merged into one.