Imagine that a dialogue took place between MacDonald and McGinniss after the publication of Fatal Vision. Write what you think that conversation might have been like.

Read Fatal Vision. Keeping in mind the contradictory opinions you have read in The Journalist and the Murderer, write an essay about the role that McGinniss played in influencing the reader’s opinion.

If you had the opportunity to interview Malcolm about her own feelings about McGinniss and MacDonald, what would you want to know? Write a series of questions that you would pose to Malcolm, and then attempt to answer as you think Malcolm would.

What opinion do you draw of Malcolm’s own ethics though your study of The Journalist and the Murderer? Write an essay exploring this topic.

Analyze Malcolm’s use of language in The Journalist and the Murderer. Is it matter-of-fact? Exaggerated? Convincing?

Do you agree with Malcolm’s contentions about the relationship between the journalist and the subject? Write a review of The Journalist and the Murderer. You may want to read reviews that appeared when the work was first published.

Seligman wrote in Salon of Malcolm, ‘‘What journalist of her caliber is so widely disliked or as often accused of bad faith? . . . In the animus toward her there is something almost personal.’’ What opinion do you draw from The Journalist and the Murderer of Malcolm as a person (not as a journalist)?