Last week, Slate’s Jack Shafer revealed that Times reporter Alexei Barrionuevo had plagiarized part of an article about cheap cocaine in Argentina. (Regret report here.) In response, the Times published an Editors’ Note but declined to detail the action it would take in response to the revelation. I wondered if this meant the Times would not be conducting an investigation into Barrionuevo’s previous work.
Now, a week after his first column, Shafer has returned with another example of theft by Barrionuevo. Here’s what Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson said about this recent example:
It appears that Alexei did not fully understand Times policy of not using wire boilerplate and giving credit when we do make use of such material. As I mentioned to you, other papers do permit unattributed use of such material. He should not have inserted wire material into his Times coverage without attribution.
That said, because the new examples do not involve many words or an original thought, the transgression does not seem to be as serious as the first instance on paco.
Even if the paper believes the first example is worse than the second, there’s the larger concern that Barrionuevo is a repeat plagiarist. It’s surprising that Abramson is offering justification for his lapses rather than saying the paper will investigate the matter. How many examples are required before a red flag goes up? The Times should apply some reporting to this situation and discover if there are other skeletons lurking in Barrionuevo’s closet — and in the paper’s archives. Then, with that knowledge, it can take the appropriate action.
Of course, this should have been done in the first place. At this point, Barrionuevo has two strikes against him and the paper is on the defensive. It’s also a good bet that others will play the Nexis/Google game with Barrionuevo’s previous work. The clock is ticking.
Ryan Tate at Gawker also raises an important point. First, he quotes from Shafer’s first column:
Barrionuevo had been working on the paco story for a couple of weeks and realized at the end of the process that he needed definitional passages about the drug to distinguish it from crack cocaine. [Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson] says that instead of consulting his notes, which he claims contained the information, he relied on Google. Indeed, a copy of the Herald story can be found via Google.
Writes Tate:
So reporter Barrionuevo was looking for basic information about a drug at the center of his Page One story, but instead of turning to his notes, which he claimed contained the information, he just ran a Google search and copied over what he found on the Herald website. It’s bad that he essentially copied the text, but also how did he even know the information he was passing on was accurate? If he couldn’t remember the details of what was in his notes, how could he be sure the Herald information matched those details?
Also puzzling is the fact that a Times reporter with many stories under his belt seemingly “did not fully understand Times policy of not using wire boilerplate and giving credit when we do make use of such material.” Questions abound.
