Categories: OLD Media Moves

How could NYT let Kouwe plagiarism occur?

Marketwatch.com media columnist Jon Friedman is asking that question in his column Friday, wondering how the plagiarism by New York Times business reporter Zachery Kouwe, who resigned this week, was allowed to happen.

Friedman writes, “The public-relations nightmare comes at a time when the Times is trying to establish itself on the Internet. It takes pride in its many blogs and has increasingly devoted resources to creating more of them as advertising continues to be a worry for the newspaper industry.

“Did the Times make a mistake by assigning Kouwe to this position? Did his superiors do a poor job of supervising him? Did his bosses put too much pressure on this reporter and others in general? Did the Times create a toxic culture that all but ensured that something horrendous like this might happen sooner or later?

“Last week, I asked in this space how a newspaper with such a long tradition of journalistic excellence could make so many business mistakes.

“Now, I’m asking: How can a newspaper with such a record of journalistic excellence allow this disaster to take place?”

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Jeremy Borden says:
February 19, 2010 at 10:43 am
"Journalistic disaster?" I would say "journalistic disaster" is when reporters overlook facts or fail to look at situations critically that lead to misinformed debate on critical issues (Judith Miller); or just plain make stuff up (Glass, Blair, et al). Certainly the guy deserved to be fired, but let's not get ridiculous here. He did what television news does every day and nobody gets upset about that.
Why this reporter lifted dry, factual passages from WSJ is beyond me. He could have just as easily relied on the Times earlier reporting. NYT deserves its fair share of flack on this, but let's not go overboard. --Jeremy