Blogger as Journalist: Shaming the Professionals

National Post (Toronto): Midnight blogger exposes a scandal. 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 blogger is a history professor. But what he did in this case was, purely and simply, journalism.

And as far as I can tell he did it better than any of the professional journalists who were covering the story. This case shames the journalism profession, but it’s not as unusual as it should be.