Author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson hit upon a style of writing and description that blended story-telling, elaboration, and news articles into something known as gonzo journalism. The style was a reaction against the established form of feature writing, which focused on objective third-person descriptions of events detailed without emotion or evidence of personal involvement. Thompson turned this genre on its head by writing an article entitled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" that was filled with the subjective first-person style of observation, sharp humor and irreverent flair that would characterize a lot of his later works, written in scattered thoughts and honest details, like pages ripped out of a personal journal.

Thompson gained widespread fame for this writing style when he followed around the Hell's Angels for a year. Notorious for his drug use and aberrant behavior, Thompson was beat up by the Angels themselves at the end of the year, though the book that came out of this experience won him much press and critical attention. He gained even further notoriety when he published an embellished account of a trip he took with Oscar Zeta Acosta (lawyer, activist, and writer of books including The Revolt of the Cockroach People). The trip, meant as a way to chat while Thompson covered the Mint 400 motocross race, became the inspiration for Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The crazy anecdotes, colorful characters and guerilla-style reporting led to two cinematic offshoots including the one of the same title starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.

Thompson later referred to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a failed experiment in gonzo journalism because of the minor editing that was done to the work. Later gonzo journalists would follow in Thompson's requirements by avoiding editing, oftentimes submitting transcripts of phone calls and personal interviews, and utilizing loosely poetic techniques, sarcasm, and oftentimes profanity and drug use. Thompson, whose recent suicide on February 2005 was said to be the reaction to pain and ill health, had his ashes out of a canyon to a Bob Dylan song during his funeral, at his request.

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