The New York Times is conducting an investigation after a Wall Street and finance reporter was found to have improperly used wording and passages from other news organizations.
Zachery Kouwe, who joined the Times in 2008 from the New York Post, “reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgement,” the Times said in an editors’ note.
The Times said Kouwe appeared to have “improperly appropriated wording and passages published by other news organizations” in a number of business articles over the past year and in posts on NYTimes.com’s DealBook blog.
According to his biography on the Times website, the New York-based Kouwe worked from 2005 to 2008 at the New York Post, where he was chief mergers and acquisitions reporter.
The Wall Street Journal alerted the Times to similarities between a Journal story and a Times story of February 5, the newspaper said.
“A subsequent search by The Times found other cases of extensive overlap between passages in Mr. Kouwe?s articles and other news organizations,'” the Times said.
“Copying language directly from other news organizations without providing attribution — even if the facts are independently verified — is a serious violation of Times policy and basic journalistic standards,” the newspaper said.
“It should not have occurred. The matter remains under investigation by The Times, which will take appropriate action consistent with our standards to protect the integrity of our journalism.”
According to the Times website, Kouwe covers hedge funds, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, investment banking and other subjects.
Nearly seven years ago, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned over what the newspaper at the time called “widespread fabrication and plagiarism.”
Again.
Jayson Blair redux.
What about all the stuff that is lifted from blogs with attribution? I suspect that a large part of reporting is reading blogs nowadays and “reporting” based on that.
A lesson to be learned is that what is todays ridiculous comment on a blog or forum becomes tomorrow’s NYT headlines and is suddenly a legitimate issue.
And I am sure you all can see where it goes from there.
It was the WSJ that pointed out this particular story, they have the werewithall, time and tools to search out such plagerism and they are upset by it. Many bloggers are more than happy to see just what they wrote being written in a “prestigious” news publication.
An important fact to keep in mind when reading these newspapers and when posting items publicly.