“As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.”

American journalist and author

Hunter S. Thompson was an American journalist and author, best known as a pioneer of New Journalism. He became widely known for Hell's Angels (1967) and for the vivid, confrontational style that later came to be called Gonzo journalism. For Hell's Angels, he spent a year with the Hells Angels motorcycle club and wrote from direct experience of their lives. His profile rose further with “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” a 1970 article for Scanlan's Monthly that helped establish his reputation as a countercultural writer and a central figure in Gonzo, where the writer becomes part of the story.