Duke lacrosse: New York Magazine

A strong article that gives credit where due:

Rape, Justice, and the ‘Times’

In the movie, Tom Hanks would play K. C. Johnson. He’s the most impressive of the “bloggers who have closely followed the case,” in the Times’ tacitly pejorative construction. But Johnson is the Platonic ideal of the species—passionate but committed to rigor and facts and fairness, a tenured professor of U.S. history (at Brooklyn College), a 38-year-old vegetarian who lives alone in a one-bedroom Bay Ridge apartment and does pretty much nothing but study, teach, run, and write.

Johnson has no connection to Duke. (His B.A. and Ph.D. are from the Harvard of the Northeast.) His attention was grabbed in April by the “deeply disturbing” public comments of Duke faculty that righteously indulged in invidious stereotypes and assumed the lacrosse players’ guilt. “One area that the academy, especially since McCarthyism, is supposed to stand up is cases where due process is denied,” he says.

He usually posts at least once a day—not standard autoblog rim shots, but carefully argued, deeply researched essays running 1,000 words or more.