New York Times reporter accused of plagiarism resigns

WASHINGTON — A Wall Street and finance reporter for The New York Times accused of plagiarism has resigned, the newspaper reported.

Zachery Kouwe, who joined the Times in 2008 from the New York Post, resigned on Tuesday, the Times said, citing "two people briefed on the matter."

The newspaper said Kouwe met on Tuesday with representatives of the Times, The New York Times Co. and the Newspaper Guild of New York to discuss possible disciplinary action but instead the reporter resigned.

A Times Co. spokeswoman, Diane McNulty, was quoted as saying "the Times has dealt with this, as we said we would in our Editors' Note, consistent with our standards to protect the integrity of our journalism."

In the Editors' Note, the Times said Kouwe appeared to have "reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment," in a number of business articles over the past year and in posts on NYTimes.com's DealBook blog.

The Times said it was alerted to the plagiarism case by the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson, who noted similarities between a Journal story and a Times story of February 5.

"A subsequent search by The Times found other cases of extensive overlap between passages in Mr. Kouwe's articles and other news organizations," the Times said in the Editors' Note earlier this week.

"Copying language directly from other news organizations without providing attribution -- even if the facts are independently verified -- is a serious violation of Times policy and basic journalistic standards," it said.

According to his biography on the Times website, the New York-based Kouwe covered hedge funds, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, investment banking and other subjects. He worked from 2005 to 2008 at the New York Post, where he was chief mergers and acquisitions reporter.

Nearly seven years ago, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned over what the newspaper at the time called "widespread fabrication and plagiarism."