Coulter Plagiarism Story Picks Up Steam

Is the Ann Coulter plagiarism story shifting from a one-day spark into a days-long saga?

Interest appears to be growing. John Barrie, the man whose technology identified the instances of plagiarism in acidic right-wing writer Ann Coulter’s columns, is getting more calls to do national television.

Barrie, whose analysis of Coulter’s work was first reported by the New York Post on Sunday, has recently been contacted by the Today Show and Good Morning America, he told me. In addition, AP, the New York Times and others have called him for stories they’re working on, and the New York Post is planning a follow-up piece, he said.

“It’s picking up,” Barrie told me this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Ann Coulter’s caustic columns to over 100 newspapers nationwide, says they might use two different tools to audit Coulter’s past columns, in light of the recent allegations.

So they’re telling Editor & Publisher, anyway. UPS spokeswoman Kathie Kerr has yet to respond to my email this afternoon asking for an update on the matter.

E&P reports:

“We’ll see what we can find on our own,” said Kathie Kerr, the syndicate’s director of communications, noting that Universal would use the information referenced in Sunday’s New York Post article. . . .

The Universal spokeswoman said. . . she did hear from a sales-division person at the iParadigms company with which [John] Barrie is affiliated. Kerr said she was told that iParadigms wasn’t sure if it “could provide the same information about Coulter as was given to the Post,” but that the syndicate “could subscribe to the service that provided the information” to that newspaper.

“This tool is a service sold through subscription on LexisNexis,” said Kerr. “We use the research tool on LexisNexis quite a bit. The plagiarism tool is called Copyguard and is about a year old. We’ll want to set up a trial period and of course get pricing on this tool, but it sounds like something that would benefit us. I don’t know how long it will take to get a trial period set up.”

“From what I’m told, they were very, very eager to talk terms with LexisNexis,” Barry told me.