New York Magazine columnist Ross Barkan has been accused of plagiarism, launching an internal investigation into his past work.
The accusation began on Thursday after Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell accused Barkan of lifting material from his May 9 piece on The Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro for a similar piece on Shapiro’s business. After Harwell highlighted the similarities between the two articles, New York Magazine updated its piece with an editor’s note offering credit to the Washington Post, though Harwell explained he wasn’t “entirely sure what happened.”
After Harwell’s comments, NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn found additional examples of what appeared to be Barkan lifting similar phrases and descriptions from The Intercept and Compact Magazine on other reports.
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“The paragraphs in question are summarizing the historical background or context of the stories, with some instances containing the same 30 words in a row, or near identical passages with a word or phrase slightly tweaked,” Allyn wrote.
In a comment to Fox News Digital, New York Magazine issued a statement that it would be “conducting a review of the writer’s prior work” in light of this report.
Barkan defended his work in his own comment to Fox News Digital, saying that he “did not plagiarize anyone” and “[a]ll of this is ridiculous.”
Barkan repeatedly pushed back against the report and criticized Allyn’s reporting on his X account during the weekend.
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“Here’s a lesson for reporters out there. When you are writing a story, don’t email at 11:24 p.m. and threaten someone for comment about a story you publishing ‘tonight.’ It’s deeply unserious. @BobbyAllyn’s been doing this a long time, and it sure doesn’t show,” Barkan wrote on Saturday.
In another post, he wrote, “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.”
“I get it – media reporters get bored. We all hunt for ideas. We all get obsessed with Twitter. But this is one of the dumber controversies imaginable,” Barkan wrote.
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Meanwhile, Harwell has shared NPR’s report and stood by his accusation.
“@RossBarkan copied my lede almost word for word. @BobbyAllyn found other questionable passages, and @NYMag is reviewing his work. Now Ross says it’s ‘one of the dumber controversies imaginable’ and ‘you become a target after a while when you do this,'” Harwell wrote.
Compact Magazine editor Matthew Schmitz, who agreed that Barkan “heavily plagiarized” Compact writer Juan David Rojas’ work, also called out Barkan’s comments.
“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,” Schmitz wrote.
