How did a bow tie-wearing, Harvard- educated professor, a prolific blogger who wrote hundreds of posts about the Duke University sexual assault scandal, expose the truth behind the Duke lacrosse scandal.
KC Johnson does not fit the stereotype of blogger, journalist, legal analyst or lacrosse fan.
Yet in the last year he has become all four. The bow tie-wearing, Harvard- educated professor is the prolific blogger behind Durham-in-Wonderland, writing hundreds of posts about the Duke University sexual assault scandal. A tenured history professor at Brooklyn College in New York state, he stays up until midnight to post his latest musings on the case, even though he is five states from the action in Durham, N.C.
One of the accused lacrosse players publicly thanked Prof. Johnson for his “diligent work exposing the truth” after the North Carolina Attorney-General dropped the charges against the three last week. Indeed, some of the defence lawyers relied on the blog to help build their court arguments.
The focus is now shifting to the actions of Mike Nifong, the district attorney, amid allegations he used the case to win support for his re-election campaign from Durham’s black community, which largely sided with the players’ black accuser.
Fellow bloggers frequently said if a Pulitzer were awarded for online commentary, the contrarian professor would win. “There is absolutely no doubt that Johnson’s blog, Durhamin- Wonderland, was the single best source of information about what happened in that house in March of 2006 and what has happened with the case since,” one sports blogger wrote this week.
“[W]hat he’s done is the most important work anyone has ever done in blogging about sports.”
