Scoop! Journalists in Fiction: Nudges

The Inky Path

Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society. If you have favourite representations of journalists in European fiction or insights into ways they are portrayed, please email Scoop!

One of the purposes of Scoop! was to invite others to do my work for me by highlighting characters I'd either never heard of - or had forgotten. Partly to that purpose, and partly to see how ideas travel through the blogoshere (the day job intrudes) I set in train the Scoop! meme.

Here are some of the recommendations:

De komst van Joachim Stiller/The coming of Joachim Stiller by Hubert Lampo (Serge Cornelus)
New Grub Street, by George Gissing (Andrea Weckerle)
Will Farnaby in Aldous Huxley's Island (Jack Yan)
Derkhan Blueday, art-critic for the Beacon and secret correspondent for the illegal Runagate Rampant in China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (Elizabeth Albrycht)
Millon De Floss, the journalist/stalker in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book (Charles Arthur)
Barry White, literary hack in 72 Virgins, by Boris Johnson (Sam Smith)
The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carre (Simon Collister)