Ever heard of Truman Capote or IN Cold Blood? Some say he was the father of a new genre called Literary Journalism. He took a real story and produced a literary work of non fiction. He was a writer before the dreadful murders of a farm family in the mid west over 50 years ago. It was a senseless, brutal murder by two hopeless men who had nothing to lose. They thought they would find the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel but found themselves without money and four people who now knew who they were. They found themselves up against the wall, as usual, with nowhere to go. The farm family had no chance of surviving. The locals were in a state of shock when the news spread about the well known family who had been murdered during the night while they all slept. The police had never seen anything like it themselves. They called in the specialist to examine the murder scene. There is usually some kind of evidence left at a murder scene. This time it was a bloody shoe print on a basement floor where the teenage son was murdered. Some shoes leave definite imprints and this particular boot had one that was fairly easy to trace to its manufacturer. Needless to say the culprits were caught and went on trial. I guess it was one of the trials of the twentieth century. There were a lot of them and most of them people do not remember any more. The new movie "Capote", starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won a Golden Globe for his role as Capote, goes into the association of Truman Capote and one of the killers named Perry. Capote went to the scene of the crime  and interviewed people who knew the victims. He was also allowed access to the two killers. He gained their trust and came away with their story. Literary non fiction is the best way to describe Capote's book, to me. It is written like a novel but it is about actual events and people. In Cold Blood  was one of the first books I bought myself, many years ago. I kept up with Truman Capote until he died, a broken man without his natural glow and good humor. For an in depth look at Truman Capote please visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capote_t.html In these times of war there are quite a few literary journalists. Bob Woodward has been around a long time and first became famous with the advent of Watergate back in the seventies when Richard Nixon was president. Here is an explanation of Literary Journalism from http://www.hnet.uci.edu/litjourn/program/program.html Literary journalism is an emerging field of study that is known by varying names, including creative nonfiction, the literature of fact and literary nonfiction. The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University holds an annual national conference on narrative journalism; there are anthologies devoted to it; many colleges offer courses in it, or feature it as an option within their majors. UCI's program builds on existing departmental strengths: its nationally ranked programs in creative writing, literature and literary theory. Literary Journalism majors take three intensive writing seminars, and are expected to develop a portfolio of work by graduation which they can present as evidence of their skill for purposes of employment or future education. At the same time, majors are asked to take a comprehensive look at the theory, history and context of literary journalism. Among other forms, they study and write narratives, memoirs, profiles, histories and personal essays, in subject areas as varied as science, politics, justice, travel, sports, food and popular culture. They use as models a multitude of writers, ranging from Daniel Defoe, James Boswell and Stephen Crane to George Orwell, John Hersey, Lillian Ross, Joseph Mitchell, Gay Talese, John McPhee, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Tracy Kidder, Calvin Trillin, Hunter Thompson, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer.