How did journalistic sketches contribute to the development of the modern short story?

Journalistic sketches played a foundational role in the evolution of the modern short story by serving as one of its two primary literary ancestors, the other being the tale.1

While the tale is an ancient, intracultural form often rooted in myth and oral tradition, the literary sketch emerged after the 16th century as an intercultural, journalistic medium. Sketches were typically descriptive, analytic, and factual, designed to depict aspects of one culture for the benefit or pleasure of another.21

In the 19th century, writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Nikolay Gogol began to fuse the imaginative, symbolic qualities of the tale with the observational, realistic nature of the sketch. This synthesis allowed authors to move beyond the rigid fantasy of traditional tales and the strict factuality of journalism. Consequently, the modern short story developed as an autonomous genre that balances these polarities, ranging from highly imaginative narratives to those rooted in photographic, journalistic observation.1