Ruth Shalit Barrett

The Atlantic has retracted an article in its November 2020 issue written by Princeton University alumna and former plagiarist Ruth Shalit Barrett, citing “serious concerns about its accuracy.” The article, “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents”, is about parents making their children take up elite sports like fencing and lacrosse to get them into elite colleges.

In the mid-90s, Ruth Shalit was a rising star, writing for GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Observer and becoming an associate editor at The New Republic at the age of 24. She was in demand because of her conservative outlook and her enthusiasm for baiting Clinton liberals in Washington (her sister, Wendy Shalit, is a conservative writer and the author of A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue (1999)). However, she was found to have plagiarized articles she wrote for The New Republic in August 1994 and June 1995, and the magazine was forced to print apologies. According to a story about the Atlantic retraction in The New York Times, Barrett denied that she had plagiarized the articles. She claimed that she had confused her typewritten notes with articles she had downloaded for research. You can judge for yourself with some further examples of plagiarism printed in Mother Jones in the same year. However, after a controversial story of hers about affirmative action at The Washington Post was found to have many errors, she was accused by the Post‘s executive editor of demonstrating “a shameful absence of journalistic standards.” She took a six-month leave of absence, returning to The New Republic to write “cultural criticism, book reviews and trend pieces.” In 1999 she left The New Republic and Washington for good and took a job in New York, developing campaign strategies at the advertising agency Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and very occasionally writing for publications like The Wall Street Journal. She remained a member of a rogue’s gallery of famous plagiarists, however. She later moved to LA, married, and took her husband’s last name (Barrett), and wrote as Ruth Shalit Barrett for publications like Elle and New York Magazine (which raised some eyebrows). She now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her family.

Fast forward to this November and her article in The Atlantic. The article is “laden with factual problems and misleading passages“, according to her old foe, The Washington Post. The main subject of the article, a mother identified only by her middle name, Sloane, has a completely fictitious son, and there are falsehoods about the serious fencing injuries sustained by her daughters. After she was challenged about the fictitious son, Barrett told her editors that Sloane had lied to her about having a son. But, according The Atlantic, “The next day, when we questioned her again, she admitted she was “complicit” in “compounding the deception” and that “it would not be fair to Sloane” to blame her alone for deceiving The Atlantic.” The editors concluded that “Barrett deceived The Atlantic and its readers about a section of the story that concerns a person referred to as “Sloane.””

In explaining its decision to assign an article to a former plagiarist, The Atlantic says that “more than two decades separated her from her journalistic malpractice at The New Republic” and “in recent years her work has appeared in reputable magazines.” They “took into consideration the argument that Barrett deserved a second chance to write feature stories such as this one.” However, they now believe that “We were wrong to make this assignment.”

The article appeared under the byline “Ruth S. Barrett”. In retracting, as opposed to removing, the article (it is still available as a pdf), the magazine has also updated the byline to “Ruth Shalit Barrett”, so as not to hide the identity of the former plagiarist, now turned fabulist. In becoming a fabulist, of course, she has followed in the footsteps of other associate editor at The New Republic, Stephen Glass.

Coda: In January 2022, just over a year after this post was published, Ruth Shalit Barrett brought a lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing The Atlantic and Donald Peck, its top print editor at the time, of defamation. She is asking for $1 million in damages.