Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente has again been accused of plagiarism and the newspaper’s editor-in-chief has apologized, saying her work “fell short” of the paper’s standards.

In a recent blog post, Ottawa-based artist Carol Wainio drew attention to Wente’s April 23 column “ for lifting an unattributed phrase from a piece by American scientist Jesse Ausubel.

It also criticized Wente for leading with a similar anecdote about bears, paraphrasing two of his other observations without direct attribution and paraphrasing from a different article without linking to or citing the original author.

Wente did not immediately reply to a request for comment from the Star. The online version of her column has been updated to include attribution, a link to the other article not previously cited and an editor’s note that apologizes to Ausubel.

When contacted by the Star, David Walmsley, the Globe’s editor-in-chief, and Sylvia Stead, the paper’s public editor, referred to the public editor’s recently posted column on the Globe’s website.

“This work fell short of our standards, something that we apologize for. It shouldn’t have happened and the opinion team will be working with Peggy to ensure this cannot happen again,” said Walmsley’s statement in the column.

Included in the column was a line that said Wente “deeply regrets these mistakes.”

Stead noted in her column that the Globe would publish a correction and apology in the print edition of Tuesday’s paper regarding Wente’s April 23 column. Stead also said the paper would publish a correction and apology for Wente’s March 12 column, in which she used a phrase from a Slate author’s work without attribution.

Contacted by the Star, Ausubel responded by email.

“A lot of the column is not derived from my work. The link allows people to trace what is,” he wrote. “The blog post seems to come from someone who had a prior dislike of Ms. Wente and continues to dislike her.”

Walmsley and Stead did not respond to requests to clarify what exactly will be done to make sure such a situation does not happen again or whether there would be a broader review of Wente’s work.

It’s not the first time the veteran columnist has been accused of plagiarism.

When Wainio raised concerns about a Wente column’s similarities to other sources back in 2012, then editor-in-chief John Stackhouse eventually admitted the “the journalism in this instance did not meet the standards of The Globe and Mail.”

Wainio elaborated on her recent concerns in an email to the Star.

“I’ve not followed Ms. Wente’s writing with any regularity over the last few years and was surprised to find further attribution issues so easily,” she wrote, adding there is a “history of many similar attribution problems not adequately addressed by the newspaper, which I think go beyond whether an individual author feels they’ve been properly credited.”

Wainio said that in her view “methods like these undermine confidence in journalism.”

“My concerns are with public discourse, and I’ve simply asked whether certain standards are being consistently applied by one of the major newspapers in Canada,” she added.

Ann Rauhala, an associate professor at Ryerson’s school of journalism, said it seems from the Globe’s “rapid and fairly firm” response that people at the paper are taking the incident very seriously.

“The reaction that I hear in the sort of broader journalistic community is, ‘oh no, not again,’ followed by a variation of ‘Gee, how is it that she still has a job as a columnist?’” Rauhala said.

“It damages everybody’s credibility when somebody with such a privileged position and such an enviable platform appears not to play by the rules,” she added.

Rauhala said it was “really interesting” that the Globe’s public editor reproduced part of the paper’s code of conduct in her responding column and that Walmsley said the incident should not have happened.

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But she still has questions.

“What does that mean: ‘working with Peggy to ensure this cannot happen again?’ I think people are wondering,” Rauhala said, adding that part of the column has provoked some “raised eyebrows and smiles” among people she knows who care about journalism.

“I would love to know how this happens,” she added.