Gonzo means wildly unconventional, especially in journalism. Gonzo journalism, a gonzo style, go full gonzo.
Gonzo journalism puts the reporter inside the story as a character, abandons any pretence of detachment, and is associated above all with Hunter S. Thompson. The word now attaches loosely to anything chaotic and first-person.
1adjectivegonzoWildly unconventional, especially in journalism.
“His gonzo reporting put himself at the centre of every wild story he covered.”
gonzo is a style.
Coined in 1971 by the editor Bill Cardoso; the origin is disputed, possibly from an Italian or Spanish word for a fool.
Coined in 1971 by Boston Globe editor Bill Cardoso. Of unknown origin; OED proposes Italian gonzo (“dolt”) and / or Spanish ganso (“dolt, goose”). The etymology supplied by Cardoso himself (French gonzeaux) is spurious; French does have a similar word gonze, but this is a loan from Italian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA