Choose one of the three questions below to answer. Answers should run roughly between 1500 and 2000 words. Please email them to me no later than Friday at noon. Draw from the texts cited. Thanks all.
1. In "The Journalist and the Murderer," Janet Malcolm, a high-end magazine journalist, directly and indirectly expresses strong opinions on all sorts of things, a traditional journalism no-no. Do you think she nevertheless has produced a work of solid investigative journalism? Do you feel confident in her version of events and interpretations? If yes, why? If no, why not? In your opinion, what can would-be journalists take not from the work of Joe McGinniss that is criticized in "The Journalist and the Murderer" but from the work done by Malcolm in reporting and writing her book?
2. "The Journalist and the Murderer" centers around a betrayal. Journalist Joe McGinniss strung along murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, pretending to be his friend and to believe in his innocence in order to collect material for a book in which he had decided to depict MacDonald as a psychopath. According to Janet Malcolm, the author of "The Journalist and the Murderer," that betrayal was just one of a series of betrayals and other failings made by McGinniss as he was reporting and writing his book. What are some of these other betrayals and failings McGinniss is guilty of, according to Malcolm, and what do you think is the main related lesson Malcolm's book offers to students in a beginning news-writing course?
3. Based on our reading, describe the "view from nowhere"? How does it relate to a book like "The Journalist and the Murderer" by Janet Malcolm? If the view from nowhere, as news-media analyst Jay Rosen suggests, is a bad solution designed to address a legitimate concern for journalists, what new solution(s) might journalists apply in its place?
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