In the United States, literary journalism’s roots can be found in the nineteenth-century evolution of realism and is so closely tied to that evolution that the claim can be made that literary journalism emerged with the realistic turn and is a form of realistic storytelling. Various forms of communication and art, particularly in the urban context, made a distinct move away from romanticism and depictions of the ideal toward capturing the common and the everyday. This chapter will consider just how American urban journalism from the 1840s to the turn of the twentieth century led the way in focusing on the lives, manners and mores, and behavior of people from all walks of life as well as on actual events and incidents, large and small, thus placing journalism at the forefront of realism’s emergence.