Word: malcolm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...book, The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm describes the real case of journalist Joe McGinniss, who spent years interviewing and buttering up a convicted murderer—only to publish a biography of the man arguing that he was a psychopathic killer. The convict sued him for fraud; he had thought the journalist was his friend. The case ended in a hung jury, but the jurors had tended to favor the murderer...
...Malcolm, this case is a metaphor for what all journalists do, especially in the context of profiles and feature stories. Reporters seduce their sources with their attention, their willingness to listen, all the while imagining a story in their heads that has nothing to do with how the people they interview see themselves...
...journalist is fair to his or her subjects, Malcolm argues. There’s always a kind of deception; the game is inherently unfair...
It’s worth noting that Malcolm herself was unsuccessfully sued for libel by the main subject of one of her nonfiction books. But other writers also make arguments like Malcolm’s. “My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests,” Joan Didion wrote. “And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody...
...read The Journalist and the Murderer the month before I started working on the students who plan to be president story. I didn’t want to agree with Malcolm. I thought it would be possible to write an arch saga of Harvard ambition without selling anyone out. I imagined my conversations with Caleb as a level playing field—a wannabe journalist and a wannabe politician playing the interview game across the streets of Georgetown. Caleb had experience dealing with the press. He had been hand-picked by Karl Rove to serve as his assistant. I wasn...