The aim of this essay is to present a model for analyzing the in- terplay between voice and point of view in literary journalism/reportage. The model can be used to nuance previous researchers’ discussions about “subjective” and “objective” journalism. It also problematizes the reporter’s special role as an eyewitness by highlighting how narrative techniques can create empathy with the Other and move the reader’s gaze away from the reporter, away from the one who is witnessing. Using tools from classical narratology, I focus on the form of the texts. The tools help me investigate the narrator’s as well as the characters’ subjectivity and interpret the narra- tive’s construction as an expression of a journalistic mission. I systematize variables such as the narrator’s visibility, the relation between an experienc- ing reporter and a narrating reporter, the interplay between the experienc- ing reporter and other characters in the text, and in what way a level with a director (an implied author) can facilitate a comparison between vari- ous kinds of literary journalism. I also examine whether it might be time to abandon the theory that a first-person reportage is more subjective in general than a third-person reportage. I explore whether it is instead the narrator’s visibility that determines the position of the text on a scale be- tween “subjective” and “objective” forms. (Note: I have provided a glossary of terms at the end of the essay.)

Drawing upon the tenets of discourse narratology, this essay identifies and discusses the various narrative and rhetorical features typical of literary journalism/reportage that have evolved from the classical tradition of first-hand observation/eyewitness reporting. I give examples of narrative patterns that have influenced literary journalism throughout the 20th century and up until today, and argue that they differ from structures found in comparable ways of narrating in fiction as well as in autobiographies. I highlight four consequences of a rhetorical “position of witnessing”: a narrative perspective directed from the outside and inward, and an illusion of simultaneity of a reporter being present on the spot and seemingly witnessing and narrating at the same time. Furthermore, the essay explores how realism, in terms of mimetic (scenic) form and scrutinized details, works differently in literary journalism than in realistic fiction. In this article, I attempt to demonstrate how narratology can open new doors to our understanding how literary journalism works in its single structures and how these structures in turn affect the reader’s experience.

A reportage is the reporter's story about reality. Even though it details real events, it always presentsa personal interpretation of these events. In contrast to the news article, which primarilyinforms readers, a reportage involves a pronounced degree of personal narration. Normally it is based on the reporter's role as an eyewitness. This essay discusses how the position of the eyewitness establishes narratological structures inthe text, which seem to differ from the structures present in other kinds of non-fiction narrativestold in the first person. For instance, in reading an autobiography, a reader's empathy willbe drawn toward the main character. By contrast, a reportage will direct the reader's empathyaway from the reporter and towards the other. The narratological construction of a reportage may be studied as an interplay between threeinstances: the experiencing reporter, the narrating reporter and the director (the implied reporter).Thus, a three-part model may be utilised in order to help explain, for example, how ahomodiegetic narrator can be combined with external focalisation, and how a character otherthan the experiencing reporter can be internally focalised. It can also illuminate how the textmay employ a form of dissonance between the experiencing and the narrating reporter to serve ajournalistic purpose (displacing the perspective from person – the reporter – to subject-matter).