Literary Journalism by Norman Sims
Published 1995 · 100,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage
How hard is Literary Journalism to read?
Literary Journalism scores 30 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Academic critical vocabulary combined with accessible journalism studies discourse.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Theoretical framework for the genre is developed systematically alongside examples.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Historical, theoretical, and ethical dimensions of the form are addressed in every chapter.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Critical argument is direct and organized around defined analytical categories.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analytical rather than figurative; symbolic dimension is discussed as a property of the subject.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Scholarly tone is measured and earnest.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Each chapter resolves its analytical questions clearly.
- Structural complexity: 32 out of 100
- Introduction plus anthology sections organized by theme and historical period.
How Literary Journalism is regarded
Literary Journalism holds a literary regard score of 74 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.