Maureen Dowd Admits to Plagarizing Paragraph

By Kat Ahn on May 18th, 2009

Popular New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to lifting a paragraph from Talking Points Memo blog editor Josh Marshall.  The Washington D.C. based reporter has been a columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page since 1995 and has also won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1999.

A blogger from TheJoshuablog first found the contested paragraph in Dowd’s Sunday column and said that it was the same paragraph from Josh Marshall’s blog from this past Thursday.

Dowd wrote the Huffington Post the following,

“josh is right. I didn’t read his blog last week, and didn’t have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.
i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we’re fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.”

It is noted that the correction will be in tomorrow’s New York Times.