“The propensity of man to imitate what is before him is one of the strongest parts of his nature.”

— Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872)

Journalists who say they’ve never been tempted to plagiarise are either liars or haven’t read enough. However, journalists who give into the urge are either — to put it mildly — dim-witted or too smug to realise they’d eventually get caught.

But what if you have been caught once?

Outlook Executive Editor Dilip Bobb’s case of what smells like plagiarism and reads like plagiarism is inexplicable because back in 2010, Bobb was allegedly made to resign and rumour has it that the reason was plagiarism.

The magazine’s Letter From The Editor on Rajinikanth signed by Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie had lifted sentences off a Slate article. Purie had then written to Slate, basically stating that “those in charge of editing the copy” were responsible for the plagiarised portions and that “serious action has been taken against those concerned”. Bobb, then-the managing editor of India Today, was rumoured to have been held responsible, though, neither India Today nor Purie ever issued a clarification on who exactly copy-pasted sentences from the Slate piece.

Cut to 2016, and a case of plagiarism involving Bobb’s byline has come to light. The piece in question is a combined review of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton’s latest albums – Fallen Angels and I Still Do, respectively. The 550-odd word piece has close to 200 lines that are either direct lifts or heavily “inspired” by NPR’s review of Fallen Angels and Consequence of Sound’s review of I Still Do.

Newslaundry was alerted to this by Thiruvananthapuram-based architect and researcher Krishnachandran, who diligently colour-coded Bobb’s copy-paste job for us to see the pattern.

Follow the colours.