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BuzzFeed reviewing Benny Johnson's work upon discovery of 'plagiarism'

BuzzFeed is conducting an internal review of editor Benny Johnson's work after identifying multiple instances of what editor-in-chief Ben Smith described as "plagiarism."

The instances were brought to BuzzFeed's attention by Twitter users @blippoblappo and @crushingbort, who cited six instances in which Johnson lifted passages from sites like The New York Times, Wikipedia, The Heritage Foundation and National Review Online without attribution.

“There are three serious instances of plagiarism in this post," Smith told Poynter on Friday.

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Gawker's J.K. Trotter had reported Thursday on other instances flagged by the two Twitter users, including passages lifted from Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia and U.S.News & World Report without credit.

Smith called those examples "serious failures" but stopped short of calling them plagiarism.

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"Benny Johnson is one of the Web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work," Smith said at the time.

Smith is waiting for BuzzFeed to conduct its full review before deciding how to proceed.

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