Regret the Error

The New York Times published an editors’ note today revealing that business reporter Zachery Kouwe “reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment.” Here’s the note:

In a number of business articles in The Times over the past year, and in posts on the DealBook blog on NYTimes.com, a Times reporter appears to have improperly appropriated wording and passages published by other news organizations.

The reporter, Zachery Kouwe, reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment.

The Times was alerted to the problem by editors at The Wall Street Journal. They pointed out extensive similarities between a Journal article, first published on The Journal’s Web site around 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, and a DealBook post published two hours later, as well as a related article published in The Times on Feb. 6.

Those articles described an agreement on an asset freeze for members of Bernard L. Madoff’s family, in a lawsuit filed by a court-appointed trustee. In the Times article and the DealBook post, several passages are repeated almost exactly from the Journal article.

A subsequent search by The Times found other cases of extensive overlap between passages in Mr. Kouwe’s articles and other news organizations’. (The search did not turn up any indications that the articles were inaccurate.)

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. 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.

The Times often adds hyperlinks to its online articles, so it seems strange that the note doesn’t include a full range of links to the offending pieces. It only links to the work that included passages from the WSJ. What about Kouwe’s other stories/blog posts that stole from “Reuters and other sources”? The NYTPicker also pointed out a couple of things left unsaid:

The Editor’s Note — which avoids the word “plagiarism” in describing Kouwe’s actions — goes on to say that a followup investigation turned up “other cases of extensive overlap between passages in Mr. Kouwe’s articles and other news organizations’. ” But the note doesn’t specify those cases, or give the precise number of other similarities it has found so far …
It isn’t clear what action, if any, the NYT has yet taken to punish Kouwe for the appropriations the NYT is revealing in this note. Nor is it clear the extent of Kouwe’s borrowings, beyond the NYT’s vague reference to “a number” of instances.

Update Feb. 16: The Times reports Kouwe has resigned:

A New York Times reporter accused of plagiarizing portions of several articles resigned from the newspaper on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The reporter, Zachery Kouwe, who had already been suspended, met late Tuesday afternoon with representatives of The Times, The New York Times Company and the Newspaper Guild of New York. The participants were to discuss possible disciplinary action, including dismissal, but instead Mr. Kouwe resigned.

Participants were told that the meeting had to remain confidential, but the events were described by the two people who spoke on condition of anonymity …

Update Feb. 17: Kouwe spoke to the New York Observer:

“I was as surprised as anyone that this was occurring,” said Mr. Kouwe, referring to the revelation that he had plagiarized. “I write essentially 7,000 words every week for the blog and for the paper and all that stuff. As soon as I saw, I guess, like six examples, I said to myself, ‘Man what an idiot. What I was thinking?’”

Mr. Kouwe says he has never fabricated a story, nor has he knowingly plagiarized. “Basically, there was a minor news story and I thought we needed to have a presence for it on the blog,” he said, referring to DealBook. “In the essence of speed, I’ll look at various wire services and throw it into our back-end publishing system, which is WordPress, and then I’ll go and report it out and make sure all the facts are correct. It’s not like an investigative piece. It’s usually something that comes off a press release, an earnings report, it’s court documents.”

“I’ll go back and rewrite everything,” he continued. “I was stupid and careless and fucked up and thought it was my own stuff, or it somehow slipped in there. I think that’s what probably happened.”

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