New York Magazine Columnist Accused of Repeated Plagiarism by Fellow Journalists From NPR, WaPo

New York Magazine columnist Ross Barkan was accused of plagiarism by fellow journalists from NPR and the Washington Post, prompting an internal review at the magazine.

NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn insisted in a series of X posts this weekend that Barkan copied ledes, directly lifted quotes and sentences, and failed to properly cite the work of others. Allyn’s messages come just days after Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell accused Barkan of lifting the lede of one of the outlet’s stories for his own work.

“The lede of our Shapiro story on Saturday and the lede of the @NYMag story today,” Harwell captioned screenshots of the beginning paragraphs from both stories.

“After the similarities were pointed out on X, we updated the piece to credit and directly quote from the Washington Post and acknowledged the change in a note on the piece,” Lauren Starke, New York Magazine spokesperson, told TheWrap. “We are conducting a review of the writer’s prior work.”

Allyn shared Harwell’s post hours later and wrote, “hurry delete Claude from your browsing history before your editor asks about it.”

Allyn later sifted through Barkan’s work and found other instances of alleged plagiarism that he shared on X. “The pilfering of @drewharwell’s reporting by @RossBarkan was so egregious, I decided to do another spot check,” he wrote. “I ran a random piece of his through an LLM and asked if any verbatim phrases appear in any other publication, and it came back with a hit. He lifted several exact phrases from a story by @GeorgiaGee14. Seems like a deeper dive into his work would be worthwhile?”

In a separate message, Allyn shared a 22-word passage penned by Barkan that appears to be a direct copy of one written by Gothamist traffic reporter Ramsey Khalifeh. (It’s worth pointing out that at least one person asked if it was possible both reporters simply used the same press release in this instance.)

The allegations picked up steam Friday, when Compact religion editor Matthew Schmitz chimed in, “So @RossBarkan heavily plagiarized a @rojasrjuand article in Compact. He claims that this is a-ok because he linked to Juan’s article. No. That isn’t how it works.”

Barkan responded to the allegations Saturday.

“Between Crain’s and New York Magazine in the last calendar year, I have published something like 150 columns,” he wrote on social media. “A story is currently being written about *3.* One was updated with proper citation, and the other two had proper citations already.”

“I get it – media reporters get bored,” he later added. “We all hunt for ideas. We all get obsessed with Twitter. But this is one of the dumber controversies imaginable.”

Barkan also wrote, “I am incredibly proud of my track record. I write honestly, and I write originally. You become a target after a while when you do this.”

The post New York Magazine Columnist Accused of Repeated Plagiarism by Fellow Journalists From NPR, WaPo appeared first on TheWrap.