Robb Walsh, On Being A Plagiaree

I felt a weird sense of pride to find myself among the writers that Mark Williams at the Montgomery County Bulletin ripped off.

I just finished reading his recent restaurant review “Where There’s Smoke, There’s BBQ.” Of the 1338 words, 515 of were plagarized from my article “The Art of Smoke,” which appeared in the HP in 2000. The lifts took place in two multi-paragraph chunks of 342 and 173 words each.

Our lawyers are taking the matter seriously. But as Jody Rosen’s article in Slate on “the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism” pointed out, Williams borrowed from the best. It’s quite a thrill for a mere food writer like me to see his name on a list with such journalistic powerhouses as Joe Conason, Sidney Blumenthal and David Fricke, even if it is a tally of victims. — Robb Walsh