Arjan Dasselaar is a Dutch journalist with a very good English-language blog called Zacht Ei ("soft-boiled egg"). It's been part of my 'additional reading' list (over in the right column -->) since I recently joined the blogosphere myself.
I'm not the only one who thinks highly of Dasselaar's writing; evidently, so does Alexis Amory of frontpagemag.com, the hardline conservative publication run by David Horowitz. Amory, in an article published two days ago, has copied Dasselaar's November 6 post verbatim — without a sliver of attribution. Just compare Amory's five bullet points, about two-thirds of the way down, to those of the Dutchman. They're exactly the same, word for word. Clumsily enough, not even the European date format (2-11 for November 2) has been changed. Anyway, that's seven consecutive sentences, or about 150 words, lifted wholesale. No question.
(I'm not in a position to say for sure, but Amory's article may have other problems of the same nature. The way it's laid out on the screen — with random-seeming passages in dark grey rather than black, and with some type showing up at smaller point sizes for no apparent reason — seems to point to a careless cut-and-paste job from the web.)
If Editor-in-Chief Horowitz would like to take a stand for the credibility of his magazine (no easy feat with columnists like Ann Coulter and Tanya Metaksa, but worth a shot), he should let his readers know if other instances of bold-faced plagiarism have occurred on his watch; and also what he considers fair treatment for those caught stealing other journalists' work.
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NOTE: On Dec. 3, frontpagemag.com corrected the disputed article. The piece now gives proper credit to Dasselaar and Zacht Ei, as you'll see if you click on the second link of this post. But I'd already saved and archived the uncorrected, original version, in order to allow you to see what kicked off all the fuss. Click on the following link to see it:
AMORYSOURCE.html
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