Journalistic reportage vs. literary reportage. Diversion of reality towards propaganda during the proletcult time. Case study – F. Brunea-Fox

Often named „literary species of frontier”, sometimes „obliged” to obey the rules of literary theory with arguments about narrative amplitude, elaborated style and author notoriety, the reportage originally was and still is to a great extent a journalistic genre. Essentially based on the construction rules imposed by the journalistic presentation of a real event, unchanged and unprocessed, but placed in a broader context so as to permit the analysis of causes and consequences, the portrayal of the actors, the analysis of their psychic. The author may appeal to introspection, using autoreferential style, occupying two positions, as a receiver and speaker for the public, conveying the emotions resulted from his implication in the event. Regarded as a star-journalist in the years 1930 – 1937, F. Brunea-Fox would produce texts taken by the Romanian interwar mass-media as reference, characterized by an alert style, depth in the analysis of the social problems he approached, contextualization, and objectivity. The force of his texts can be quantified according to the responses of those targeted, especially the authorities of the time, extremely sensitive to press-transmitted messages. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the literary reportage was, at least in its years of glory – the proletcult époque, an overstated propaganda resource. The effort to adapt of a journalist with the value of Brunea-Fox failed. In most of his later writings, Brunea-Fox refers to the journalistic reportage – which he regards as worth being considered a literary species.