Samiha Khanna was one of two reporters to break the story of the "lacrosse scandal" March 24, and she quickly realized she would not be the last to write about it.
The Raleigh News & Observer staff writer's article came out 10 days after an exotic dancer alleged she had been gang-raped by members of the Duke men's lacrosse team, and sparked a wave of national attention.
Khanna said she anticipated the coverage that would follow.
"We sort of went into it knowing that as soon as it came out the next day, everyone would be all over it," Khanna said, adding that the only unknown factor was the amount of time required for the media frenzy to develop fully.
"How long would it take to reach all the corners of the country? The answer is not long," she said.
In the days following the N&O's article, the story quickly infiltrated national news.
March 29, a New York Times front-page headline read "Rape Allegation Against Athletes is Roiling Duke," and extensive national coverage continued throughout early April.
Just one week after Khanna's story ran, the case was featured by news outlets ranging from Newsweek to ESPN to the BBC.
"The first week when the story was breaking was absolutely the craziest," Khanna said. "It was definitely dominating the 24-hour news cycle."
Several news sources focused on town-gown relations in their coverage of the case, and media experts said it was the attention to issues surrounding Duke-Durham dynamics that attracted not just local but also national media.
"This is exactly the kind of story we would be interested in," said Newsweek Senior Writer Susannah Meadows, Trinity '95. "It has all these sorts of elements that are at play that pull together the most compelling strands of American life."
Khanna said the contributing factors--including race, class, wealth, education, entitlement, sex and drinking--are very common across the country but rarely occur simultaneously as they did in the Duke case.
"These are all hot topics on college campuses and elsewhere," she said. "To have them all together is what makes national news."
As indictments in the case were eagerly awaited, familiar talking heads from cable news channels and reporters from national media outlets swooped into Durham, dotting the campus with satellite trucks and swarming Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's office.
Kenneth Rogerson, professor of public policy and research director for the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, added that in any situation, major national coverage of a story requires a significant amount of chance.
"Sometimes it's just a matter of luck of the draw as to what catches someone's eye," he said. "Once one national media outlet picks up on it, it's much more likely that other national media will follow suit."
Media experts also agreed that the style of coverage evolved--with local and national reports starting to diverge--as the case progressed.
By early summer, local newspapers still closely followed developments like law professor James Coleman's public criticism of Nifong and the emergence of potential challengers in the upcoming district attorney's race in November.
Waning national coverage, however, focused on broader questions, often extrapolating the issues stirred up to spark debate about topics such as privilege, athletics and social life on college campuses.
In June, a Rolling Stone magazine piece entitled "Sex and Scandal at Duke" induced heated controversy about the behavior of students outside the classroom.
A few weeks later, a Newsweek article asked "Has the Duke Case Collapsed?" and described "an angry e-mail" Nifong sent to Meadows, leading the district attorney to publicly release the correspondence, claiming he had been mischaracterized.
Khanna said national coverage is now focused on "analysis and speculation" rather than first-hand reporting.
Ted Vaden, public editor of the N&O, said local outlets, however, still pay attention to the smaller details in the case.
"The local media is more interested on a day-by-day basis on things like the Durham DA's race," he said. "I doubt that the national media is checking each day to see if the potential candidate opposing Nifong is going to run because people locally care about that more."
Meadows said the decline in coverage is unlikely to be permanent.
"It does seem to be teetering out a bit," she said, noting that Durham appeared much calmer during a recent visit than it had in prior weeks. "It will all come screaming back if it goes to trial."
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