Penguin Random House Suspends Ross Barkan Book Sales After 67 Columns Were Corrected
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · Aug 18
Penguin Random House Suspends Ross Barkan Book Sales After 67 Columns Were Corrected
1 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · Aug 18
Summary
Major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and Walmart removed preorder pages for Barkan’s October book, and Penguin Random House also pulled the title from its own site.
The suspension followed New York magazine’s plagiarism review, which ended Barkan’s freelance relationship and led Vox Media to correct 67 columns for missing attribution of language, information or sourcing.
The scrutiny began after a May complaint that a Barkan column on Ben Shapiro closely resembled a Washington Post article; NPR later identified additional potential copying.
The fallout is spreading beyond the book: The Nation said Barkan is not under contract for a new column and is conducting its own internal review, while the New York Times said it found no standards violations in his past work there.