“Software Millionaire John McAfee Says He Is Now Calling Portland Home” by Mary Emily O’Hara, Willamette Week

http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-29632-software_millionaire_john_mcafee_says_he_is_now_calling_portland_home.html

This three-part piece on John McAfee, best known for his antivirus software, explores his professional life a bit but delves more into his notoriety and his questionable legal and moral history.

The first thing that struck me about the profile was that the magazine was interviewing him when he seemed to be currently entwined in legal troubles – yet he still agreed to do an interview with a fairly prominent magazine.

The lead is catchy and conversational – even if I didn’t know who John McAfee was, I would want to keep reading because they make him seem like a significant person.(“Yes, that John McAfee).

“He’s been called a modern-day Col. Kurtz, a pimp, a spymaster, drug-addled, and just plain crazy,” describes O’Hara, directly addressing McAfee’s general public image in no uncertain terms. McAfee recently fled Belize to avoid questioning about the murder of his neighbor, an American expatriate, and, after illegally crossing into Guatemala, was deported to the US. McAfee, a wanted man, was shockingly free with his opinions and experiences across a number of topics, ranging from the tame to the decidedly risque.

I think WW does the right thing by directly addressing all of the rumors and reputations surrounding McAfee without actually making any of their own assumptions. They also admit that they were surprised to even get an interview with him. I think that their honesty about McAfee’s status makes sense because it allows readers to truly grasp his current situation.

The overall tone of the interview is a little scattered and trails off in places, but I think the interviewer did what she could considering that she had to work with a subject that may not have been willing or able to be as transparent as possible.

“Rooney Mara: The Changeling” by Hamish Bowles, Vogue

http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/rooney-mara-the-changeling/

The article profiles actress Rooney Mara, star of the film “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Bowles tries to paint Mara as a mysterious, intriguing character, a role that Mara herself appears to think she embodies. The opening quote is “I feel a little…like, schizophrenic.” While in this quote, Mara refers to her myriad roles as an actress, the tone of “tortured, misunderstood heroine” permeates the piece, and Mara seems to revel in her unconventionality, at times waxing disdainful of all things mainstream celebrity.

The profile does what this type of piece should: it gives readers a glimpse of a person. I knew nothing about Mara upon reading this, but I came away with a very distinct impression of her, though a pretty negative one. Bowles does his job as a writer, but I found the piece to be trying a little too hard to be flattering, as many of Vogue’s articles are. Another Vogue trait that I noticed in this piece was that the writer tends to be a bit condescending to the readers, as if flaunting the trendiness of his life while simultaneously pointing out how adventurous and independent Mara is(“She shrugs off my suggestion of a dinner date at the very latest fashionable establishment in favor of vegetarian Korean in anonymous midtown, where we slip off our shoes and feast on delicious kale pancakes and mushroom sizzlers”). I realize that this is the kind of magazine that Vogue is, and the condescension is something readers should expect, but I think that this glee at being able to trot around with famous people is the one thing that inhibits the writers’ ability to craft a truly complete profile: I just think they get too blindsided by the glamor of it all.