The Journalist and the Murderer revisited: What interviews with journalism subjects reveal about a modern classic

Abstract

Do journalism subjects invariably feel betrayed and misrepresented by journalists, as Janet Malcolm claims in her seminal 1990 book The Journalist and the Murderer? If not, what explains the ongoing appeal of her now famous conclusion? Based on interviews with 83 people who were named in newspapers in the New York City–area and a southwestern city, this article takes up these questions by putting journalism subjects’ own descriptions of their experiences with the journalistic process in dialogue with Malcolm’s central argument. I conclude that Malcolm’s conman–victim model for the journalist–subject relationship fails, in some key ways, to describe journalism subjects’ experiences; and yet, Malcolm does capture important emotional truths at the heart of the journalist–subject encounter. In the end, the hyperbolic versions of the journalist and subject she portrays may continue to resonate not because they are strictly accurate, but because they play a role in journalistic boundary work, simultaneously probing and reinforcing the boundaries of acceptable journalistic practice.