Media Old and New

Abstract

The vibrancy of women’s literary writing in the UK from the 1970s to the present is matched by the diversity of women’s journalistic writing over the same period. The unstable boundary between news and literary journalism, made fluid by rapid social, cultural, and technological change, makes the field difficult to define. Consequently, journalism is often treated as a devalued cultural form.¹ Yet the importance of this area is indicated by the considerable number of successful novelists who began their careers as journalists — Angela Carter (1940–92), Helen Fielding, and Zoë Heller, for instance — and by literary authors who moved into journalism, such as Jeanette Winterson, Zadie Smith, and Bidisha.²