Why there hasn't been a Thompson follow-up

Sidney Zion argued rather weakly (if you ask me) in last week's New York Daily News that Hunter S. Thompson didn't really leave a journalism legacy because there was no follow up. Or, in his own words:

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was a commotion, to be sure. But if he changed the course of journalism, how come we never had Gonzo Two? The kids read him as we read J.D. Salinger in the '50s. Only we read without cocaine.

I knew Hunter Thompson. He wasn't Ernest Hemingway.

What kind of snobbish, ageist argument is that? Zion knows full well why there hasn't been a Gonzo Two and he's one of the reasons for it: Newspaper editors are too big of pussies to even give someone like Thompson a chance today.

In this day and age, every newspaper publisher has their eye so closely on the bottom line, they won't dare try anything that could cause the stock to go down. Every editor at every newspaper has his or her panties in constant a knot over the possibility of offending somebody somewhere with any story. So, they have to stick with the same old, which is currently the most boring, mind-numbing journalism in history.

It's hard to believe Dr. Thompson and I were ever in the same field. He had a unique voice that drew people in and defied every law of objectivity and standard grammar and punctuation. Today, our stories, if they dare be more than "he said this and she said that and this is exactly what happened with no explanation or context," than, god forbid, someone Might Get Upset. And we can't have that.

Today, Hunter S. Thompson would be fired on the spot for turning in the sort of stories he wrote. Hell, he wouldn't even be given a press pass by anyone (not even Rolling Stone) because nobody has a backbone for anything but money anymore.

Zion knows this and he's a hypocrite to say otherwise. Journalism has grown too small for talents like HST and has shut itself off to writers (myself, for instance) who would leap at the chance to tell The Truth.

Zion, you yourself dug the grave of Gonzo journalism. Now go lie in it.