Why did literary journalism become less common in early 20th-century news reporting?

By the early 20th century, literary journalism became less common in news reporting because the fields of literature and journalism were increasingly drifting apart. As journalism evolved into a distinct professional practice, it adopted specific norms, values, and routines that prioritized objective reporting over the subjective, narrative techniques characteristic of literary writing.1

During this period, the rise of news agencies and the professionalization of the industry led to a focus on "spot news"—the delivery of bare facts—which favored standardized, efficient reporting over the time-intensive, interpretive storytelling found in literary journalism. While early writers like Mark Twain and Stephen Crane had moved fluidly between the two fields, the growing emphasis on institutional voices and traditional journalistic structures in the early 20th-century newsroom meant that literary techniques played a less prominent role for several decades. Consequently, reporters who wished to employ narrative styles often turned to magazines or book-length works rather than daily newspapers.213