Twenty-five years ago, Ruth Shalit Barrett was a rising young political reporter with a contract at GQ magazine when accusations of plagiarism derailed her career as an associate editor at The New Republic. Since leaving that magazine for an advertising job in 1999, she has written occasionally for New York and Elle magazines.
Now, Ms. Barrett finds herself accused of journalism malpractice once again after The Atlantic published an extraordinary editor’s note on Friday suggesting that Ms. Barrett had deceived the publication in a buzzy article she wrote about wealthy parents prodding their children to play niche sports in hopes of getting them into Ivy League schools.
The more than 6,000-word article, which was published online last month and appears in the magazine’s November print edition, chronicles a world of wealthy parents in the Connecticut suburbs obsessed with pushing their children into sports like fencing, crew and squash, which they believe will give them an advantage in the hypercompetitive college admissions process.
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Investigative Issues: Citing Deception by Author, Atlantic Retracts Article on Suburban Niche Sports
