Driving out of New York City for a weekend vacation with his wife and a sometime screaming 4-year-old in the back seat, Jody Rosen called us to respond to what Montgomery County Bulletin Editor/Publisher Mike Ladyman had to say to us.
The conversation was a disjointed one, delivered in about five segments, Rosen’s anger diminishing each time he or we called back after his cell phone cut out. At first he wanted to address the statement issued by writer Mark Williams, who stands accused of plagiarism and is no longer working for the Bulletin. He was also ready for a point-by-point rebuttal of what Ladyman had said.
But eventually Rosen took a deep breath and said he’d decided not to escalate things; to just issue one statement. Here it is:
I stand by my story, OK? I stand by my story. It’s all true. Mike Ladyman hasn’t accepted responsibility for the dozens of instances of plagiarism that were in his paper. I don’t know the exact number…close to 20 of these examples are featured in my Slate piece. He hasn’t accepted responsibility for them or accounted for them.
I also dispute his version of the events, his narrative of our contacts. He had ample time to respond to me. I first contacted him a month and half ago He never got back to me, never issued a retraction. Never published any kind of note to readers. It’s very simple, the editor and publisher of a paper when contacted about plagiarism responds by dealing with it. He’s only dealt with it now after the fact, after it came out.
Now that this article is published he still hasn’t taken full responsibility for this. Now he’s suddenly interested in what I have to say now that it’s published. When I informed him of this before he never got back to me. A day late and a dollar short.
Well, that shouldn’t escalate anything.
– Margaret Downing
This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2008.