The Chronicle’s blog story

Today’s Chronicle has a 1000 plus word story,“Blogs stay focused on lax scandal.” Excerpts:

The national media attention that blanketed campus this spring has long since passed, six months after the first charges of rape were handed down against members of the 2005-2006 men's lacrosse team.

But among a fiercely devoted community of bloggers, there are still updates, discussions and critiques posted daily.

The vast majority of these online commentators are pro-defense, not connected to Duke and critical of both Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's actions and how the mainstream media-particularly newspapers-have covered the story. […]

I think the bloggers I read on the Hoax would have preferred to be described as “believe the players innocent” rather than “pro-defense.” Further along:

[New York Magazine writer Kurt] Andersen recently published a piece entitled "Rape, Justice, and the 'Times,'" criticizing the New York Times' coverage of the case and praising the work of KC Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College who has run the lacrosse case blog "Durham-in-Wonderland" since April.

Unlike the many blogs that primarily analyze media coverage of the story, Johnson has been lauded in the blogging community for reviewing legal documents and doing his own investigation into issues such as the financing of Nifong's election campaign and Durham activist Victoria Peterson's background.

"I'm not interested in just throwing together a blog that's just useless speculation or saying nasty things about Nifong without substantiating them," he explained. "That would, to me, just hurt the cause." […]

In addition to Nifong, newspapers have come under attack from bloggers who accuse them of being unobjective and ignoring crucial evidence.

"I've been critical of the Raleigh News and Observer from the first day I started blogging because it does a lot of things poorly and I think it's very biased," said John, a Duke alumnus who maintains the blog "John in Carolina" and declined to disclose his surname.

The coverage that bloggers provide can be influential, Andersen said, noting the forged National Guard memos used in a September 2004 "60 Minutes" piece, the authenticity of which was first questioned by bloggers.

"Bloggers have the luxury to do things the mainstream media don't... because of their passion and their focus," Andersen explained. "Bloggers don't have the fetters of institutional standards and editors and all those good things the mainstream media has."

The Chronicle’s including Anerson’s statements is good reporting. I smiled when I read bloggers are unfettered by “institutional standards and editors and all those good things.”

Anderson surely had his tongue in cheek. He knows, for instance, that if I were a reporter at the Raleigh N&O I very probably wouldn't say:

”Melanie [Sill, exec editor for news,] and John [Drescher, managing editor,] when did we first learn about all that cooperation the lacrosse players gave police investigators; and when did we first tell our readers about it? I’d like to do a story on that.

Also, I’d like to do a story with interviews of some of the people who are demanding we retract the Mar. 25 story and issue a full public apology to the players and their families on page one.

We’ll have exclusives if we hurry. No other newspaper in the state is reporting those stories.

What do you say, Melanie and John?

Now back to The Chronicle:

Johnson, who is not connected to Duke, said he was initially attracted to the case because of the "inexplicable response" of the University's faculty to the incident.

But he said he has stayed involved because the further he looked into the case, the more he was troubled by Nifong's actions and the silence of Duke's faculty.

"Usually when you learn more about something it's more nuanced, there are more shades of gray as more information comes to light," he said. "This is a case where it's been the opposite."

Michael McCusker, a New Jersey lawyer who posts almost daily on his blog, said he was prompted to start writing after meeting indicted player Reade Seligmann's father at a youth lacrosse game in May, and has continued because he feels obligated to remedy the injustices he sees in the investigation and prosecution.

"I felt that something had to be done and whatever I might do, whatever voice I might be able to raise, even if it's just shouting at windmills, would be doing some small part to rectify this travesty," McCusker said. […]

There’s a lot more in the story before it ends with :

It is difficult to measure how influential blogs are because the medium requires an audience that actively seeks it, [said Kenneth Rogerson, research director for Duke's DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy.]

"I think the impact is not potentially as strong as some people might make it out to be because it's not necessarily easy to find these blogs," he explained.

It's difficult but important to measure blog influence.

I hope Rogerson and others research who visits particular blogs and why.

With regard to the Hoax case, I’ve been told by journalists and others that many journalists at our two area newspapers – the Raleigh N&O and the Durham Herald Sun - who are involved in reporting the case “read the blogs.” So do media people at our local TV stations. I’ve even heard directly from some national journalists who are reading them.

Anderson reads blogs. Former Duke Basketball great and ESPN commentator Jay Bilas said at a recent panel discussion on media coverage of the case that blogs had helped him form a better understanding of the case. Drescher, while critical of blogs, acknowledged they did some good. So we can add Drescher's name to the "reads the blogs" list.

It’s very possible that by virtue of who they're reaching, blogs are having an influence on the Duke Hoax case greater then one might conclude from just number counts of their visitors.

All in all, I thought The Chronicle's story was well done. I hope the paper continues to report on blogs.