Times Business Reporter Accused of Plagiarism Is Said to Resign
NEW YORK TIMES, February 17, 2010 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. Last Friday, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson, sent a letter to editors of The Times saying that portions of an article written on Feb. 5 by Mr. Kouwe were identical or nearly identical to a Journal article published online hours before Mr. Kouwe’s. The Times editors investigated and found other examples. The Times made the matter public on Monday, when it published an Editors’ Note stating that Mr. Kouwe had copied passages from Wall Street Journal and Reuters articles, and used them “in a number” of his articles and in blog posts, without attribution. It did not say how many times that had occurred. “The Times has dealt with this, as we said we would in our Editors’ Note, consistent with our standards to protect the integrity of our journalism,” Diane McNulty, a spokeswoman for the company, said Tuesday. “Beyond that, we don’t comment on personnel issues.” Mr. Kouwe joined The Times in October 2008 after working at The New York Post and at Dow Jones Newswires. At The Times, he wrote for the DealBook blog, which covers mergers and acquisitions, and also wrote articles for the business section of the paper.
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