Bill Pennington, a veteran sportswriter, was launched. Mark Viera, a freelancer who had done much work for us over the years and who had attended Penn State and knew the players and the landscape, was sent. Pete Thamel, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., for the college football game of the year between LSU and Alabama, got an early flight to Harrisburg for Sunday morning. And Nate Schweber, one of the most intrepid and brave freelancers, was in his car. I had used Nate on any number of stories when I was Metro editor, from the serial killings of prostitutes in Atlantic City to the attempted subway terror attack of 2009. He’ll go anywhere, ask anything, and almost always come back with the goods.

With enough evidence that we were confident of its accuracy, we published the story on March 31. The national media ignored it. Locally, we mainly received anger from some readers.

He’s not even coy about his desire still to run a program, any program, perhaps a Division III team or, don’t laugh, a midget league basketball team. Sandusky’s parents, Art and Evie, ran a recreation center in Washington, Pa., and at heart, E.J. says, Sandusky is “a frustrated playground director.” E.J. remembers the kickball games his father organized in the backyard. “Dad would get every single kid involved,” says E.J. “We had the largest kickball games in the United States, kickball games with 40 kids.

This may never happen to them again,” he said. “For journalism faculty, it’s almost a lesson sent from heaven.

I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” said the mom of Victim Six. “[McQueary] was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized … He ran and called his daddy?

This is about about a culture that says the football team must be defended at all costs: a culture where the sexual assault of a 10-year-old is reported to Paterno before the police.