New York Magazine has started reviewing columnist Ross Barkan’s work after multiple reporters accused him of lifting language and structure from their published stories without properly crediting them.
The allegations span at least three separate pieces and involve reporters from The Washington Post, NPR, and Compact Magazine.
The controversy became visible on May 14 when Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell posted a side-by-side comparison of his paper’s story on Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire alongside a New York Magazine column by Barkan that appeared shortly after.
AI is going to be very useful is detecting plagiarism. It’s easy to check articles for other written works in just a few seconds. The select, copy and paste method that Barkan used is both lazy and wrong:
New York Magazine columnist accused of plagiarism by fellow reporters,— Allen Huggins (@AllenHuggins8) May 18, 2026
The implication was hard to miss: Barkan’s lede closely tracked the structure and substance of the Post’s original reporting on Shapiro.
As Fox News reported, the plagiarism allegations quickly expanded beyond the Shapiro piece.
On Monday morning, New York Magazine columnist Ross Barkan faced plagiarism allegations serious enough that the magazine began reviewing his prior work. The first public accusation came after Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell compared Barkan’s New York Magazine piece on Ben Shapiro’s business to Harwell’s May 9 article on the same subject.
After Harwell posted the comparison publicly, New York Magazine updated Barkan’s piece with an editor’s note crediting the Washington Post. Fox News also detailed NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn’s later findings, which pointed to additional language that appeared to mirror work from The Intercept and Compact Magazine.
The magazine told Fox News Digital that it was examining Barkan’s earlier writing, while Barkan denied plagiarizing anyone and called the controversy ridiculous. Barkan has written for New York Magazine’s Intelligencer vertical, and the disputed pieces involved high-profile political and media subjects.
Compact Magazine editor Matthew Schmitz, whose outlet was among those cited in the allegations, said Barkan had heavily plagiarized one of Compact’s writers. Schmitz also argued that a link to the original story did not make copied prose acceptable.
According to NPR affiliate KNKX, New York Magazine confirmed it is reviewing Barkan’s body of work in response to the allegations.
At least one of the flagged columns was quietly updated with added citations after the accusations surfaced publicly.
The Daily Wire noted that the controversy carries particular irony given that one of the pieces in question involved reporting on Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire’s co-founder, a figure routinely targeted by legacy outlets positioning themselves as gatekeepers of journalistic standards.
Barkan, for his part, took to social media to dismiss the entire affair.
Between Crain’s and New York Magazine in the last calendar year, I have published something like 150 columns. A story is currently being written about *3.* One was updated with proper citation, and the other two had proper citations already.
— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) May 17, 2026
He followed up by calling the scrutiny overblown.
I get it – media reporters get bored. We all hunt for ideas. We all get obsessed with Twitter. But this is one of the dumber controversies imaginable.
— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) May 17, 2026
“One of the dumber controversies imaginable” is a bold posture for a writer whose employer just opened a formal review of his work.
As TheWrap reported, the review covers Barkan’s output across his columns for both New York Magazine and Crain’s New York Business.
The pattern here is familiar. Elite media outlets spend enormous energy policing conservative commentators, flagging every imprecise claim, demanding retractions, and building entire news cycles around gotcha moments aimed at figures like Shapiro.
But when the sloppy crediting happens inside their own ranks, the instinct is to minimize, update quietly, and hope the story dies on a weekend news cycle.
Barkan’s defense amounts to: I write a lot of columns, and only three got flagged. That is not actually the exoneration he seems to think it is.
Three instances flagged by three separate outlets in a short window suggests a habit, not a fluke.
New York Magazine has not disclosed the scope or timeline of its review. Whether it results in real accountability or a quiet resolution will say a great deal about how seriously the outlet takes the standards it demands from everyone else.
The outlets that appoint themselves as journalism’s referees do not get to play by a different set of rules when the subject of the borrowed work is a conservative they already wanted to tear down.
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!