Last Monday, like every Monday, I submitted to Associate Editor Ryan Dunn a draft of my column that was to appear in last Wednesday's issue of The Post. Around midnight, I received a call from Dunn, accusing me of having plagiarized the draft from a piece by Arianna Huffington from more than a week prior on the same general topic.
Following a brief (we're talking less than five minutes) phone conversation in which I denied stealing from her blog, Dunn told me he would call back the next day. Less than 30 minutes later, he called again to inform me I would no longer be on his opinion staff.
Two days later, to my complete surprise, a rather scathing and defamatory letter from Dunn appeared in The Post regarding my dismissal and his allegations of supposed plagiarism.
I was not made aware until reading for myself that such a piece would be running, nor was I given any opportunity, until now, to defend myself publicly.
I would like to set the record straight.
If you know me personally, as some of you might, you know that I consume politics daily, as if it were a main meal. I watch or read on average (and this is no exaggeration), between five and 10 or more hours of political news every day, and aside from my previous duties as a Post columnist, I update my own blog on politics just as often.
Each time I come across an interesting story or noteworthy bit of news, I jot it down in a Word Doc and fill it in the way I would frame the story were I to write about it for my blog or in a lengthier, opinion-style piece, like how my columns appeared in The Post.
Such was the case with Arianna Huffington's HuffPo blog on April 12.
Did I read her piece when it appeared more than two weeks ago? Yes. It was one of the hundreds of articles I read that week, as I do every week.
Did I copy her work in an effort to pass it off as my own? Most certainly not. I read her piece the day it ran, and a week later penned my own piece that, likely because I had read hers, was framed similarly.
Other writers, including Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, have made similar mistakes (last year she caught flak for inadvertently lifting a paragraph from Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall). Now, I don't know Ms. Dowd personally, but my inclination is that an established journalist such as herself wouldn't be plagiarizing on purpose.
Likewise, any bits of supposed plagiarism that may have appeared in the draft I submitted were completely unintentional. Had I known such similarities existed between our respective pieces - obviously - I would have written mine differently.
However, whereas Dowd's column ran, and subsequently, she was allowed an opportunity for recourse, my draft did not run. And I was vilified in tasteless fashion by Dunn, and publicly, without warning or opportunity to defend myself.
I don't blame Dunn for dropping me from his staff; that was his call, and I understand his making it. However, for all his talk about ethical standards, something should also be said for journalistic integrity, something his letter lacked.
Oh, and for the record - these words are 100 percent my own. Grammatical mistakes included.
Andrew Zucker is a junior studying political communication strategies and former columnist for The Post.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
