Confronting the Thugs

In 2011, ESPN producer Justine Gubar was working on a story about a scandal in the Ohio State football program for Outside The Lines when she started receiving threatening notes from Buckeye fans. Those fans had been coordinating via message boards to collect information on Gubar, and then they started berating her on her Twitter and Facebook accounts, and eventually via her cellphone. “Buckeye Nation will not show you mercy,” wrote one. Another told her she was “Not even on the same level as a prostitute.”