Words of Others Force Conservative Blogger to Resign

A conservative blogger on the Washington Post’s website resigned Friday following allegations that he repeatedly had plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in earlier articles.

Washingtonpost.com hired Ben Domenech just three days earlier to widen the ideological spectrum of its online commentary. But liberal bloggers objected that he was unqualified and extreme -- for example, he labeled civil rights icon Coretta Scott King a “communist.”

His rocky start at the website became untenable when online critics produced evidence that he had lifted material for a movie review in National Review Online and for commentaries written for his student paper at the College of William & Mary, the editor of the Post’s site said.

The furor over the rise and fall of the 24-year-old blogger made “Ben Domenech” the most-searched term on the Web on Friday, according to the tracking firm Technorati.com.

Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady said that, in speaking to his superiors at the Washington Post Co., which controls both the paper and the website, “I apologized for any embarrassment that we caused for the company as a whole. I have to take the heat for that, and I am willing to do that.”

Liberal bloggers uncovered the suspicious passages that forced out Domenech, who previously had worked for prominent Republicans including Texas Sen. John Cornyn and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.

The liberal Daily Kos website posted Domenech’s review of the film “Final Fantasy” that included a passage echoing one written by Atlanta Journal-Constitution film reviewer Steve Murray. Both contained an identical description of alien beings: “Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls.”

The blogger Oregon Guy noted that Domenech’s language in an essay about parties for his college paper mirrored that of humorist P.J. O’Rourke in his book “Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People.”

“It’s not a real party if it doesn’t end in an orgy or a food fight,” both read. “All your friends should still be there when you come to in the morning.”

On Friday afternoon, Domenech offered a detailed and emotional response to the allegations in a posting on Redstate.com, a conservative blog that he helped create. He said some of the plagiarism accusations were simply wrong. Other allegations were related to a “single semester’s worth of pieces” when he was a 17-year-old undergraduate at William & Mary, he said.

“The truth is, a more responsible teenager would’ve nipped this sort of thing in the bud,” Domenech wrote on the blog under his pen name, Augustine. “A less sloppy writer would have made sure that material copied from other places never made it into a published piece, and never necessitated apologies or explanations that will do nothing to stop the critics. I was wrong not to do so.”

He added that his college editors had lifted other material, inserting the words of others into some stories at the campus paper, the Flat Hat.

As to the O’Rourke passage, Domenech said he met the writer at a Republican event and got his permission to “do a college-specific version of his classic piece on partying.”

“The piece was cleared with my editors at the paper,” he added, “and it ran as inspired by O’Rourke’s original.”

Editors at William & Mary’s paper said the party essay gave no indication the material had been taken from O’Rourke. They are continuing to investigate articles that Domenech wrote for the paper through 2000.

Domenech said the accusations were the climax of a vicious campaign -- including threats of violence -- by the “liberal attack machine.” He said managers of washingtonpost.com were “convinced by my arguments on many of these issues” but prepared to let him go because “the firestorm here will only serve to damage us all.”

Brady saw the confrontation over alleged plagiarism differently. “There are clearly passages that are similar,” he said. “We felt like we needed to address it. He came to the same conclusion before we did and left.”

Brady said he believed the conservative niche was still one washingtonpost.com might try to fill. “We are going to lick our wounds and step back from this. After we get some distance, we’ll decide what to do.”