Journalist Ross Barkan apologized Wednesday for failing to properly cite other journalists’ work in his New York Magazine columns, days after the magazine dropped him following an independent review that found attribution problems in 67 of his columns.
“None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional,” Barkan said in a statement posted to X. “In the course of writing many columns a week, I did not use citations as aggressively as I should have and did not paraphrase well enough.” He added that he “never intended to crib from anyone’s work” and apologized to journalists whose work he did not properly cite. Barkan said he would “take some time away” and pledged to “do a much better job going forward.”
Barkan’s apology comes a day after Penguin Random House suspended promotion and public sales of his forthcoming book, “The Revolutionary: Zohran Mamdani and the Remaking of American Politics.” The book, which had been scheduled for publication in October, was also removed from major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and Walmart.
New York said Friday that it would no longer publish Barkan after completing an independent review of his work. The magazine updated 67 of his columns that it said “did not include proper attribution of language, information and/or sourcing.”
“We regret that this work did not live up to our editorial standards, and apologize to the writers whose work was not appropriately attributed,” New York said.
The review began after Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell flagged similarities in May between his reporting on conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and a Barkan column on the same subject. New York updated Barkan’s column to credit the Post and said it would review his previous work.
NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn later raised additional questions about Barkan’s work, pointing to other instances in which reporting and language closely resembled material published by other journalists without attribution.
Barkan initially pushed back against the allegations. After New York completed its review Friday, he acknowledged that “there were times I should have been more careful with my citation” and apologized for the errors.
“I’ve been a journalist for nearly 15 years and written millions of words,” Barkan said Wednesday. “I have never had anything like this happen before.”
