Virginia Heffernan

Virginia Heffernan is a writer at the New York Times who was an early fan of lonelygirl15 and promoted the series through her Screens Blog on nytimes.com. Her July 28th blog on the LG15 saga marked the first mainstream media attention to the project.

Virginia closely monitored the internet sleuthing hunt to determine whether the series was "real" or "fake" which occurred at the original Lonelygirl15.com Phorum and then later at The Children of Anchor Cove forum, though Virginia herself appeared to cling to the hope that Bree was real.

On the evening of September 12, 2006, articles by Ms. Heffernan and Tom Zeller Jr. at the New York Times, and by Richard Rushfield at the Los Angeles Times, broke the story that Jessica Lee Rose was Bree, and the names of The Creators. Grant Steinfeld was the primary source for the NY Times article.