1/ Among the many problems with modern journalism is the desperate effort to guess at a subject’s motive, which has crept from biography - where at least one can hope the writer has spent time with her subject or read through his papers - to magazine and now daily journalism...

2/ Of course, the people who profile me love to guess my motives: money, anger at @nytimes, a desire for attention, a hero complex, etc. All wrong, of course (hero complex is the closest to the truth of these, all investigative reporters have it) but more importantly, who cares?

3/ Motive is the subject of trials - looking for it turns journalist into prosecutor, subject into target. Now I’ll tell you why the miscreant did it...

And this, of course, is why a certain kind of reporter loves it.

Maybe worry about reporting accurately. That’s tough enough.