"I'm a lousy journalist"
About this Quote
"I'm a lousy journalist" lands like a confession and a dodge at the same time, the kind of self-deprecation that disarms before anyone can aim. Coming from Judith Rossner, a novelist best known for anatomizing private lives under public pressure, the line reads less as career self-assessment than as a strategic refusal of the journalist's posture: the cool, authoritative extractor of facts.
The intent feels twofold. On the surface, it's an admission of mismatch with journalism's demands - speed, detachment, the pretense of neutrality. Underneath, it's a claim about what kind of truth Rossner is actually after. Novelists don't "report" in the daily-news sense; they stalk the emotional logic that facts alone can't certify. Calling herself "lousy" rejects the idea that accuracy and legitimacy only come in the form of clean sourcing and tight ledes. It's also a subtle shot at the newsroom ego: the journalist as gatekeeper, the one licensed to name reality. Rossner shrugs that license off.
Context matters: Rossner was dogged by controversy over The Possessed, accused of lifting from an unpublished case study. In that light, the line can carry an edge of preemptive mitigation - a way to frame blurred boundaries between research and invention as incapacity rather than intent. Yet it also doubles as an artist's alibi that doesn't quite absolve. If you're "lousy" at journalism, you don't get to hide behind journalistic methods when the work benefits from them.
What makes the quote work is its smallness. Four words lower the temperature while raising the stakes: if journalism can't contain the story, what did she take, and what did she transform?
The intent feels twofold. On the surface, it's an admission of mismatch with journalism's demands - speed, detachment, the pretense of neutrality. Underneath, it's a claim about what kind of truth Rossner is actually after. Novelists don't "report" in the daily-news sense; they stalk the emotional logic that facts alone can't certify. Calling herself "lousy" rejects the idea that accuracy and legitimacy only come in the form of clean sourcing and tight ledes. It's also a subtle shot at the newsroom ego: the journalist as gatekeeper, the one licensed to name reality. Rossner shrugs that license off.
Context matters: Rossner was dogged by controversy over The Possessed, accused of lifting from an unpublished case study. In that light, the line can carry an edge of preemptive mitigation - a way to frame blurred boundaries between research and invention as incapacity rather than intent. Yet it also doubles as an artist's alibi that doesn't quite absolve. If you're "lousy" at journalism, you don't get to hide behind journalistic methods when the work benefits from them.
What makes the quote work is its smallness. Four words lower the temperature while raising the stakes: if journalism can't contain the story, what did she take, and what did she transform?
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
|---|
More Quotes by Judith
Add to List
