Shaun King, who managed to parlay his visibility in the #BlackLivesMatter movement into a writing gig as the New York Daily News’ senior justice editor (a title and position the newspaper created for him), is once again mired in controversy as last week’s column seems to have borrowed very generously from both FiveThirtyEight and the Daily Beast.
Here's Shaun King lifting an entire paragraph from FiveThirtyEight last week, without quotes or attribution. pic.twitter.com/QSp1mjzY78
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) April 19, 2016
It’s not the first time King has been called out for his writing. In January, he wrote an opinion piece based on a fake tweet by someone claiming to be Ammon Bundy, and then, without acknowledging the changes, performed a quick patch job which one Daily Beast columnist called “the most idiotic salvage job I have ever seen.”
To be fair, some assume King had intended to set off the copied material from his original text.
@HashtagGriswold That link just before the graph goes to the FiveThirtyEight piece. This may have been intended as a block quote.
— John Sexton (@verumserum) April 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/JimGoodluck/status/722508421715496960
@HashtagGriswold @JamesLiamCook but to be fair, he totally changed the font from Serif to Sans Serif, so all is good.
— Ezra Butler (@ezrabutler) April 19, 2016
The Daily Beast isn’t satisfied, saying that King lifted two paragraphs — including a typo — from a piece by Daily Beast reporter Kate Briquelet. Briquelet “spent more than two months on this story. The idea that Shaun King magically had the idea to write about this immediately afterwards and publish a story coincidentally 11 hours after — it’s just ridiculous,” said Daily Beast executive editor Noah Shachtman.
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King has blamed his editors for altering his original, and they’ve admitted fault.
Editor's Note: @thedailybeast attribution was mistakenly removed by no fault of the columnist. We regret the error. https://t.co/icOJvfUFM0
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) April 19, 2016
Still, the New York Daily News is reportedly reviewing King’s previous columns for any similar screw-ups that would taint his image as a professional writer; that is, the paper that admits it screwed up his column is going to review his other columns for errors. If true, this development means at least one person will have read all of King’s columns.
https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/722520885110927361
Writers and editors on Twitter are already finding other instances of editing errors and missing attributions that look like plagiarism.
More"editor error"? https://t.co/yXApK219ma … https://t.co/aBtex8xVRo … @jimrichNYDN @katiezavadski @ShaunKing pic.twitter.com/xfYiDYEUCA
— Kevin Allman (@KevinAllman) April 19, 2016
@justinjm1 When Daily News hired him, they touted his "passion and attention to detail" lol
— Brian Doherty (@BDOH) April 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/ChrisSeay03/status/722521085443317760
@justinjm1 @benshapiro Why does he have a column again?
— BearNJ (@jimbearNJ) April 19, 2016
Well, someone’s out of a job.
“Editor has been fired" https://t.co/IJBqx7efUJ
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) April 19, 2016
"Someone really f****ed up here,” @ShaunKing said of the editor. "Someone dropped the ball.” https://t.co/bbnRrLLEeO pic.twitter.com/mo5NxJhRCF
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) April 19, 2016
Justice is served?
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