A 24-year-old blogger for The Washington Post, Ben Domenech, resigned yesterday after being confronted with evidence that he had plagiarized articles in other publications.
His resignation came after writing six blog items in the three days he worked for Red America, a blog that The Post created to offer a conservative viewpoint on its Web site.
Mr. Domenech — who had worked in the Bush administration and was a founder of the conservative blog RedState.com — came under heavy criticism from liberal bloggers, who called his political views extreme.
They first pointed to previous comments by Mr. Domenech, who recently called Coretta Scott King a "communist."
But by late Thursday, the bloggers had found instances of what appeared to be plagiarism, …show more content…
Domenech attended.
Jim Brady, the executive editor of The Washington Post Web site, said that he knew that Mr. Domenech would be controversial but that a background check before he was hired did not reveal plagiarism.
"We've been catching a lot of grief on the blogs for not catching this ourselves, but obviously plagiarism is hard to spot," Mr. Brady said. He said The Post planned to hire another conservative blogger in Mr. Domenech's place.
In an interview, Mr. Domenech said he never "purposefully" plagiarized but admitted that some passages in his articles were identical to those previously published elsewhere.
He said one instance was the fault of an editor at the student newspaper, who he said inserted a passage from The New Yorker in an article without his knowledge. In a staff editorial posted on the Web site of The Flat Hat, the student newspaper, the editors called Mr. Domenech's actions, if true, deeply offensive.
Mr. Domenech also said that he may have mixed up his notes with articles from other
His resignation came after writing six blog items in the three days he worked for Red America, a blog that The Post created to offer a conservative viewpoint on its Web site.
Mr. Domenech — who had worked in the Bush administration and was a founder of the conservative blog RedState.com — came under heavy criticism from liberal bloggers, who called his political views extreme.
They first pointed to previous comments by Mr. Domenech, who recently called Coretta Scott King a "communist."
But by late Thursday, the bloggers had found instances of what appeared to be plagiarism, …show more content…
Domenech attended.
Jim Brady, the executive editor of The Washington Post Web site, said that he knew that Mr. Domenech would be controversial but that a background check before he was hired did not reveal plagiarism.
"We've been catching a lot of grief on the blogs for not catching this ourselves, but obviously plagiarism is hard to spot," Mr. Brady said. He said The Post planned to hire another conservative blogger in Mr. Domenech's place.
In an interview, Mr. Domenech said he never "purposefully" plagiarized but admitted that some passages in his articles were identical to those previously published elsewhere.
He said one instance was the fault of an editor at the student newspaper, who he said inserted a passage from The New Yorker in an article without his knowledge. In a staff editorial posted on the Web site of The Flat Hat, the student newspaper, the editors called Mr. Domenech's actions, if true, deeply offensive.
Mr. Domenech also said that he may have mixed up his notes with articles from other