Midnight blogger exposes a scandal

Online journal credited with breaking case against Duke lacrosse players

Mary Vallis, National Post

Published: Monday, April 16, 2007

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.

KC Johnson, blogger of Durham-in-Wonderland, also known as by Robert D. Johnson.View Larger Image View Larger Image

KC Johnson, blogger of Durham-in-Wonderland, also known as by Robert D. Johnson.

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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."

"It came about entirely by accident," Prof. Johnson, 38, said last week from an airport departure lounge in Raleigh. "There didn't seem to be much else out there."

He is writing a book about the case with Stuart Taylor of the National Journal. They picked the title long before the players were exonerated: Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.

It is a marked departure from the subjects of Prof. Johnson's other published works. They include historical tomes on Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress and the Cold War and Western civilization. Yet his affinity for the case is not so odd considering his own struggle against a perceived injustice.

In 2002, the academic was at the centre of a fight against Brooklyn College after he was denied a promotion that would have given him tenure. He had been deemed "uncollegial," in part because of his opposition to hiring a woman he considered unqualified.

More than two dozen historians at prestigious universities, Harvard and Columbia among them, leapt to his defence, describing Prof. Johnson as one of the "most accomplished young historians in the country."

He also enlisted the help of an employment lawyer. Together, they amassed a thick file debunking the claims and went public. The City University of New York board later overturned the college's decision. His blog about the Duke case was, in a sense, his way of passing on support in the same way he received it: bloggers defended him during his battle.

He was prompted to launch the blog by the actions of Duke faculty members: 88 professors endorsed an ad in the student newspaper urging the university to address racism and sexism on campus.

"It might be naive on my part, but I think that most professors choose this profession because they like students, and they like to teach students, and they like working with students," Prof. Johnson said.

"And what you saw from the group of 88 was basically a contempt for their own institution's students. If you feel that way about your students, why are you teaching?"

He also felt compassion for the three white privileged lacrosse players, who were accused of gang-raping a black stripper at a fraternity party. His younger sister played basketball for Columbia and he understands how hard college athletes work to maintain their academic and athletic requirements.

So he began to blog. The more he learned, the more astonished and outraged he became. Before long, the blog was a priority. Without the restraints

of an editor, word limit, newspaper deadline or the guise of impartiality, his writing flourished. But with careful consideration for his professional reputation, he says he approached the blog as an academic project to ensure his posts were not merely spontaneous rants or ramblings.

For a July, 2006, post that questioned the photo identification method that Mr. Nifong used, for example, Prof. Johnson says he contacted every district attorney in North Carolina, as well as 10 police departments. He questioned them about lineup policies and procedures, and concluded the process used in the Duke case was wildly atypical.

The blog became an invaluable tool for the students' lawyers involved, said James Cooney, the lead lawyer for one of the three accused.

He would read Prof. Johnson's blog

every morning and follow the links to his original source material, all of which was meticulously documented, to help build his defence. He recalled one post in January, 2007, quoting a Duke Police report that said a woman working on Mr. Nifong's re-election campaign had advocated the house where the alleged gang rape occurred should be burned down.

"He really worked as a historian," Mr. Cooney said.

"He did what historians do: He'd go in and he'd look at source material and try to put together facts and understand what was going on. He was just doing it more in real time. "

On its best days, the blog attracts about 15,000 visitors, says Prof. Johnson, He did not do all of his legwork from afar, but spent thousands of dollars travelling to North Carolina. He was there last Wednesday to cover the big news, rushed back to Brooklyn to teach on Thursday, then popped up in Raleigh on Friday to cover Mr. Nifong's request for the State Bar to dismiss ethics charges against him.

The professor plans to keep updating Durham-in-Wonderland until June, when the Nifong case is scheduled to begin. After that, academe calls: He's moving to Israel this fall to take up an appointment as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities & Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University.

"There are no lacrosse games in Tel Aviv," Prof. Johnson said, chuckling. "It will be a dramatic change of pace for me."

Mvallis@nationalpost.com



 
 

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