Currently making his first public statements after a scandal: Jonah Lehrer. ”If I write again, then what I write will be fully fact-checked and footnoted,” he said.
MORE STUFF: What led Jonah Lehrer to this point?
Zakaria’s apology:
“Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore’s essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers.”
Time Magazine’s statement:
TIME accepts Fareed’s apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed’s column for a month, pending further review.
The otherwise well-regarded journalist was caught copying parts of a New Yorker article on gun control without offering proper credit.
EDIT: CNN is also suspending the host, saying he used a portion of the TIME column in a blog post, complete with plagiarism.
“We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s TIME column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.”
Newly-unemployed author Jonah Lehrer may have questionable judgment about Dylan quotes, but he has decent taste in houses. He and his wife spent $2.25 million on this home, once owned by legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Something tells us the mortgage payments might not be quite so easy after today.
CORRECTION: Wrong house. Updated with the correct photo. Still a nice house, though. Apologies for the mix-up.
When I asked about aspects of his interactions with Rosen, Lehrer provided a sketchy timeframe and contradictory specifics—he first told me that he had personally exchanged emails with Rosen, then attributed this supposed email exchange to his literary agent—then further claimed that Dylan’s management had approved the chapter after being sent a copy of Imagine. He added that Dylan’s management didn’t want their cooperation sourced in the book. But when I contacted Dylan’s management, they told me that they were unfamiliar with Lehrer, had never read his book, there was no bobdylan.com headquarters, and, to the best of their recollection, no one there had screened outtakes from No Direction Home for Lehrer. Confronted with this, Lehrer admitted that he had invented it.
Holy. Shit. (via popsins)
Jonah Lehrer has since resigned from the New Yorker and his publisher is halting shipments of print copies of Imagine. (via capitalnewyork)
In other words, a slow news day in the world of journalism scandal. This is actually round two for Lehrer. As it is, Dylan says so much interesting stuff already — why do you have to make it up, anyway? (Update: Joe Hanson has pasted a version of the article on Google Docs, because the site is down.)
It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong.New Yorker blogger and author Jonah Lehrer • Apologizing for duplicating his material on his New Yorker blog from multiple other sources, including a post called “Why Smart People Are Stupid,” a recent post of his that went viral, which discussed why otherwise intelligent people make stupid mistakes. Spot the irony, folks.
(Source: The New York Times)
I’ve been meaning to write a piece about this. We were talking earlier about the daily gaffes and Twitter and the news cycle, and I’m totally as much to blame for helping that atmosphere as anyone. We all engage in tweeting and commenting and hammering these guys when they say something off message. It’s created a crisis for political journalism. People genuinely do not think it is in their interest — both White House and campaign officials, both campaigns, it’s not a partisan thing at all, it’s Democrats and Republicans — they genuinely do not believe it’s in their interest to talk in an unguarded way. Because even if they trust you to get the context 100 percent right, it doesn’t matter, because they know that a liberal or conservative blog, or a campaign ad, will just grab something out of context and run with it and create some damaging meme.
I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and it’s worse now than it’s ever been. If you think about it from their perspective for a second, you can’t totally blame them. Lately I’ve realized it’s harder than it’s ever been, and these campaigns want to exercise complete and total message discipline. In the current media environment, that’s the whole game. There’s pretty serious tension between running a campaign and running a transparent and open White House. We often complain about this, and rightfully so, but we have to recognize some of the blame here.
What are the odds the Etch A Sketch gaffe would’ve become a thing had Twitter not existed?
I’m a screenshot from a story that’s begging to be taken seriously because it’s trying to be meta and stuff. Reblog me!
Newspapers are kind of dreary, depressed places. I would go the penniless Web route to get practice. You can enter the mainstream so much quicker there.New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell • Suggesting, during a lecture at Yale, that writers should work for free online to get practice, rather than at newspapers. Gladwell, who once worked at the Washington Post, said that while he had good experiences there, he ultimately felt that newspapers’ lack of profitability makes them less desirable in this regard. How many writers or journalists out there would be willing to take this advice — or are at this very moment? (ht Poynter)
The cover of next week’s issue. Read our Steve Jobs coverage: http://nyr.kr/mPLCkE
Not bad. Think our favorite so far is Newsweek, though.
Just about says it all. (The New Yorker)
Classic and timely all at once. Striking for the exact opposite reasons this particular cover drew our fancy two days ago.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
