Daily Beast Reporter Resigns After Plagiarism

Daily Beast reporter Lizzie Crocker resigned from the company this weekend after allegations of plagiarism against her were confirmed by the publication, TheWrap has learned.

“Plagiarism is unacceptable,” Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon told TheWrap in a statement. “Lizzie Crocker has offered to resign and her resignation was accepted.”

“Though this was a difficult decision, we take plagiarism seriously, and will not allow the hard-earned trust we’ve built with our millions of loyal readers to be compromised,” he added.

Crocker worked with the company since 2011, according to her LinkedIn profile. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Crocker’s last and most recent piece for the Daily Beast, “How Katie Roiphe Became Feminism’s Nemesis-In-Chief,” borrowed heavily from a Weekly Standard piece by Alice B. Lloyd. Roiphe aroused ire on social media last week because of speculation that she was planning to reveal the author of the “S—ty Media Men” list in an upcoming story for Harper’s Magazine. The list’s creator, Moira Donegan, eventually outed herself in a widely praised essay for TheCut.

The piece has been removed from the Daily Beast website.


“The story published about author Katie Roiphe violated The Daily Beast’s Code of Ethics and Standards and has been removed,” reads a brief editor’s note.

Avlon said the piece was swiftly taken down after an internal investigation.

“When we became aware of this incident on Saturday, we took swift and decisive action to verify the extent of the plagiarism, and deleted the article with an editors’ note,” he said. “A larger investigation of her work at The Beast has revealed no other incidents of plagiarism. But one incident is enough.”

The issue was first brought to wide public attention by New York Times Magazine contributing writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who detailed the extent of the plagiarism on Twitter on Sunday.

“Hypothesis: @nymtwit felt free to copy @Aliceblloyd bc she could safely assume few readers look across ideological lines, a @thedailybeast reader is unlikely to check the @weeklystandard,” he said. “All stay hunkered down, but the irony is that the same exact piece can work in either venue!”