UPDATE: Wall St. Journal 'Copy' Boy Kouwe Quits NY Times

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Confronted by his editors with accusations of multiple instances of plagiarizing passages from articles in The Wall St. Journal and Reuters (see "TUOL" post 2/16/10), business reporter Zachery Kouwe has resigned from The New York Times.

Kouwe, a former reporter for The New York Post and Dow Jones Newswires who joined the Times in 2008, contended that he never has fabricated or knowingly plagiarized a story and was in "complete shock" when editors revealed the findings of their probe that was triggered by a letter from Wall St. Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson complaining that Kouwe had wholesale copied from Journal business writer Amir Efrati's work. 

"Inadvertently" claiming others' creative efforts as one's own on at least six separate occasions is like "accidentally" backing one's car over an annoying neighbor four times.  What the heck Kouwe?

NYT Editors' Note Concedes Reporter Stole from Wall St. Journal

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Prompted by a letter from Wall St. Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times citing a purported half-dozen  instances of Times reporter Zachery Kouwe plagiarizing text from Journal writer Amir Efrati's Feb. 5 story concerning an agreement that froze the assets of relatives of Bernard Madoff, the Times published an Editor's Note acknowledging several articles over the past year in which Kouwe allegedly reused language from Journal and Reuters stories without attribution.

The Times said an internal investigation is ongoing and has yet to comment on the fate of Kouwe.  Appropriating the work of another reporter and taking credit for it is a serious ethical breach. Oddly, the Times Editor's Note states that nothing allegedly filched by Kouwe in his articles appears to be inaccurate. Is the Times lauding Kouwe for allegedly being a careful thief or damning him with faint praise by suggesting that at least he didn't make stories up out of whole cloth like former Times scribe Jayson Blair?