New York Magazine is reviewing past articles from one of its columnists just days after he was hit with plagiarism allegations.
The contributor, Ross Barkan, was accused of ripping off other writers in at least three articles published recently in the magazine — including a Washington Post report from last week on Ben Shapiro and questions over the health of his conservative media empire.
Barkan, who has strenuously denied the plagiarism claims, was called out on social media after Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell posted screenshots that pointed out near-identical paragraphs in the two stories.
Soon after, the magazine revised the first paragraph of Barkan’s article to include a direct mention of the WaPo reporter and included an editor’s note at the bottom.
“This story has been updated to credit reporting from the Washington Post,” the note stated.
Amid the scrutiny, an NPR reporter said he had subsequently uncovered two other examples of Barkan allegedly “pilfering” from other writers from the Intercept and Compact Magazine after running his past work through an AI model.
The controversy has spurred the magazine to examine Barkan’s past work, a rep confirmed.
“We are conducting a review of the writer’s prior work,” a spokesperson for the mag, Lauren Starke, told The Post.
Barkan, for his part, lashed out on X over the saga — denying he ever blatantly stole other writers’ work, insisting he “properly hyperlinked and cited” where necessary.
“Between Crain’s and New York Magazine in the last calendar year, I have published something like 150 columns. A story is currently being written about *3.* One was updated with proper citation, and the other two had proper citations already,” he said.
“‘Multiple’ is barely any out of *hundreds* and most are incredibly weak examples. This is the definition of a non-story. I am proud of my record, and it speaks for itself. I’ll put it up against anyone’s in this industry, including your own,” he added in a follow up post.
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