Looking back, this was ground zero (click on image to enlarge):
A day later, the blog SportsByBrook picks up the story.
The story gains national attention, such as in this article by Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples.
For a glimpse at how Tar Heel apologists were receiving the story at the time, here is Tar Heel Blog's "Doc Kennedy" commentary.
10 days after Wufwuf1's message board post, the News & Observer's investigative report Dan Kane reports the story. This could be considered the first of many by Kane as he would poke and prod (or as his critics say "rehash" and "sensationalize"), keeping pressure on University officials as the breadth and depth of the scandal would slowly be revealed.
Just over a month later, it would be Kane's probing article on Marvin Austin's transcript showing Austin's curious enrollment in an upper-level AFAM course during the summer session prior to the start of his freshman year. This sparked UNC to conduct a review of the AFAM Department, and from that point on, the dominoes began to fall, eventually leading up to the Wainstein Report five years later.
In the days following the early grassroots discovery and reporting of the McAdoo plagiarism, UNC's School of Journalism professor Adam Hochburg would publish an article about the role of the Packpride message board community and the subsequent reporting by the news media. Nearly five years later, Hochburg would be featured in the Bradley Bethel film documentary project, "Unverified: The Untold Story Behind the Academic Scandal at UNC" critiquing the news media coverage of the scandal and UNC's own Wainstein investigation.
