‘Murder Blog’ at Center of Coverage of D.C. Crime Mystery Set for Trial

When a “ripped from the headlines” trial involving a dead lawyer, a gay “thruple” into kinky sex, and a bungled murder investigation begins May 10  in Washington, D.C.,  the bulk of the trial coverage will likely be handled by four guys with a blog.

While the traditional media will be present for some of the trial, the four men who started the blog Who Murdered Robert Wone are set to provide continuing coverage and frequent updates of the obstruction of justice trial connected to the 2006 murder of Robert Wone, a married man found dead in the home of the gay men involved in a three-way relationship.

In an example of citizen journalism on steroids, the bloggers have immersed themselves into the investigation of Wone since they started the blog in December 2008. They’ve even started looking for an intern and are now set to become to the go-to source in an example of how crime stories are covered in a changing media world.

Craig Brownstein, who works in public relations at Edelman during the day, told Mediaite that his partner and two friends plan to be in the courtroom every day and the four have arranged vacation and sabbaticals to coincide with the trial. Although they won’t be able to liveblog or tweet from inside the courtroom, the court’s public information officer has promised to give them two seats near the exit so they can quickly leave the room to file updates.

“We believe we’ve gained credibility with our blog, which has given us access we didn’t necessarily expect,” Brownstein said. “We aren’t a gay gadfly blog but instead have tried to be an unblinking observer inside the weave of the investigation.”

Sean Bugg, co-publisher of D.C.’s LGBT publication MetroWeekly, says  “I had my doubts about the whole idea of citizen journalism,” but thinks the bloggers have shown great commitment to their coverage, adding “they are doing the job that pretty much no one else is doing.”

With a staff of nine, Bugg says MetroWeekly just can’t provide the kind of continuing coverage of the investigation that the bloggers have given to the story.  Although MetroWeekly was one of  the first media outlets on the scene in 2006, he expects to use some of the blog’s coverage in shaping MetroWeekly’s reporting on the upcoming trial.

Brownstein says “we don’t really have a model since no one else has really done what we’ve done,” but credits the work of the Chauncey Bailey Project as an example of other crime coverage done outside the traditional media. Unlike the institutional support and investigative reporters behind the investigation of the murder of Oakland Post editor Bailey in 2007, the Robert Wone bloggers have no money and little experience in investigate reporting.

The bloggers expect to top 1,000,000 page views once the trial is over.  They have an active commenting community–who often crowdsource documents put on the blog–and a significant following that includes lawyers involved in the case, traditional media outlets, and bloggers like David Lat at Above the Law and  Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog.

The blog, while often witty, is a very straight-forward look at the evidence, the people involved in the case, and the media coverage. Each new filing in court ends up on the blog, where the memo, motion, or report is examined by the bloggers–who aren’t lawyers–and their loyal readers.

While the blog is heavy on dissecting forensics reports and legal filings, it also focuses on Wone and his family.  On the anniversary of the killing, the bloggers turned the blog over to friends and family of Wone who spent a week talking about his life and his work.

Wone was an attorney with high-profile law firm Covington & Burling and had just become general counsel at Radio Free Asia when he went to spend the night at the home of a college friend, Joseph Price, instead of driving home to his wife in the far Virginia suburbs of D.C.  Price was an attorney at another well-known D.C. law firm–Arent Fox–and had been involved in area gay rights.

When police arrived to investigate the death, the crime scene appeared to have been cleaned up and a weapon allegedly not connected to the crime was found near the body.  The three men who lived in the house, including Price’s longtime partner and a third man who had joined the relationship, almost immediately lawyered up.

Because the story has dragged on for almost four years, coverage of the murder and investigation happens in fits and starts, Brownstein said.  He credited the gay press and the legal press for staying on the story.

Michael A. Scarcella, a reporter for the National Law Journal has blogged about the story for the Legal Times, a D.C.-centric publication covering the legal community. He said that his own blog postings and regular updates have resulted in “very positive” feedback from readers.

“There are allegations the police botched processing the crime scene and that evidence is missing. The case could come down to expert testimony. This all makes for a gripping narrative for any news outlet, especially one focused on the legal community,” Scarcella said, adding that the fact two lawyers were involved as the victim and a suspect initially spurred interest in the case.

The traditional press has also reported on the story, often with some substantial coverage. The Washington Post has covered the story from the beginning including an online-only opus in 2009 by crime reporter Paul Duggan. Just recently, Washingtonian magazine did a lengthy feature by Harry Jaffe focusing on Wone’s wife and the high-profile names involved in the case.

WaPo’s Local Editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz emailed that the paper would “cover the trial the way we cover any major trial,” but decisions about coverage have not been made beyond that. Both of the city’s gay newspapers–MetroWeekly and the Washington Blade–are expected to provide coverage but not be in the courtroom for the whole trial.

“I didn’t even watch Perry Mason as a kid,” Brownstein quipped when talking about his naivete about legal reporting and criminal investigations. The four bloggers all have media backgrounds–Brownstein and his partner, Doug Johnson, met while working at C-SPAN and Johnson now works for Voice of America. David Grier is currently the senior speechwriter for a trade association and Michael Kremin is a digital media consultant.

The blog, hatched over a birthday dinner by the four men, is a way of tracking the case without taking sides.  While the bloggers became interested because of the compelling nature of promising straight lawyer found dead in the home of a gay rights activist/lawyer and his two lovers, they’ve tried to avoid the sensational nature of the story.

“It was important for us to achieve credibility and that was done by approaching the investigation with a venere of journalistic integrity,” Brownstein says.  While Brownstein said the three defendants are “one-degree of separation” from the bloggers given the small-town nature of Washington’s gay community, the bloggers did not know the defendants and the gay element of the story was not the thing that most interested them in the story.

The decision to start a blog came from their sense that the story just wasn’t being reported.  While the story got a lot of play when the crime first took place, the men felt that the strange nature of the crime and the high-profile nature of the defendants and Wone would have resulted in more news.

From the beginning, Brownstein said it was important that blog not be viewed as four gay guys trying to make a statement about a crime where the main defendants were gay. They felt it was important to focus on everyone involved and not be seen as “protecting our own.”

Counter to a snippy suggestion by Camille Paglia in a 2009 Salon piece the the the story of the killing has been largely ignored by the media due to a “blatant case of politically correct censorship,” Bugg finds the opposite is actually true.

“I think as responsible gay media, it is important we cover this even if gay people look bad,” Bugg said, adding he hadn’t heard any concern that the story did not reflect well on the gay community. “Rather than circle the wagons, the fact that the gay press and a blog started by gay men have done much of the reporting shows we are mature community and we are grown-ups.”

With the trial starting in less than a week, the bloggers have picked up the pace of their blogging and have seen a spike in hits. They say they are excited about the trial that they’ve been talking about for over a year.

“I wish I’d watched a little more CSI,” Brownstein joked, “but I can’t wait to see how it all plays out. After looking at the documents and attending the pre-trial hearings, it will be interesting to finally see how the story unfolds in the courtroom.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.