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BuzzFeed fires Benny Johnson for plagiarism

BuzzFeed has fired Viral Politics Editor Benny Johnson after finding more than 40 instances of plagiarism, BuzzFeed's editor Ben Smith announced on Friday evening.

In an apology to BuzzFeed readers, Smith said the plagiarism is “a breach of our fundamental responsibility" and that editors were in the process of attaching an editor's note to every instance of plagiarism.

"Plagiarism, much less copying unchecked facts from Wikipedia or other sources, is an act of disrespect to the reader. We are deeply embarrassed and sorry to have misled you," Smith said.

In an internal memo to staff titled "What we're doing about plagiarism at BuzzFeed," Smith said Johnson's plagiarism was "not a minor slip" and that the decision to let Johnson go was not taken lightly.

"We should have caught what are now obvious differences in tone and style, and caught this very early on. We will be more vigilant in the future. We will also change our onboarding procedures to make sure that the high standards of training that come with our fellowship program extend to everyone who arrives at BuzzFeed — and particularly to those without a background in traditional journalism," Smith said in the memo.

The accusations of plagiarism started on Thursday when Gawker's J.K. Trotter reported that Johnson has "periodically lifted text from a variety of sources" — including Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia, U.S. News & World Report — "all without credit." The instances were brought to Trotter's attention by Twitter users @blippoblappo and @crushingbort.

On Thursday, Smith said BuzzFeed had corrected the instances and defended Johnson, calling him "one of the web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work."

But soon after the same two Twitter users publicized six more instances in which Johnson lifted passages from sites like The New York Times, Wikipedia, The Heritage Foundation and National Review Online without attribution. BuzzFeed then launched an internal review.

In the memo to staff, Smith said the decision was not "a knee-jerk reaction." And in a nod to the type of new-media organization BuzzFeed is, Smith said that his firing is not a sign staff will be fired for a "small mistake or isolated error."

"We will always have a more forgiving attitude toward bold failures, innocent errors, and misfired jokes than more skittish old media organizations," Smith said.

Update (July 26, 11:15 a.m.)

Johnson apologized on Twitter Saturday morning:

"To the writers who were not properly attributed and anyone who ever read my byline, I am sincerely sorry," he wrote, linking to the editor's note about his termination.

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Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.