Janet Malcolm, the noted New Yorker writer, has died at the age of 86. She published numerous acclaimed long-form pieces and several books, including The Journalist and the Murderer (1990), based on a two-part New Yorker piece on Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald and journalist Joe McGinniss. Mr. McGinniss had written Fatal Vision, an account of Dr. MacDonald’s trial for the murders of his wife and children, and Ms. Malcolm in turn analyzed Mr. McGinniss’s relationship with his subject and the lawsuit Dr. MacDonald launched against Mr. McGinniss over what he considered to be the unflattering portrayal the author presented in the book.

Ms. Malcolm was herself embroiled in an ugly lawsuit several years earlier, when the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson sued her over some quotations he alleged she had falsified or distorted in a 1983 New Yorker article she wrote about him. The litigation ended in 1994, when a jury decided that two of the quotes were false and one was defamatory. However, none met the requirement necessary for the plaintiff to win his case. 

See also Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, 501 U.S. 496 (1991).