BuzzFeed Responds To Onion Article

An article titled “BuzzFeed Writer Resigns In Disgrace After Plagiarizing ‘10 Llamas Who Wish They Were Models’” made the rounds among members of the media on Twitter today.

The story was published on the satirical news website The Onion and said BuzzFeed staff writer Tim Mills “resigned his position Wednesday following widespread accusations that he plagiarized content in the recent slideshow.” The story reported that media reporter Jim Romenesko first discovered the plagiarism when he “noticed several striking similarities between the BuzzFeed post and a November 2011 slideshow on the Cheezburger Network titled ‘These Llamas Have It Better Than You.’”

This wasn’t the first feature on llamas to appear on the site. Ashley McCollum, publicist for BuzzFeed, said the website has been featuring llamas since it started. “We’ve been covering llamas since the early days of BuzzFeed,” she told FishbowlDC. “The Onion trolled us… A+ job.”

Mills tweeted many times about his “plagiarism.” Here are a few examples:

Just want to reiterate how sorry I am about this whole thing theonion.com/articles/buzzf…

— Tim Mills (@Tim_Mills_) May 29, 2013

Mills followed with a few more Tweets.

Really never meant to hurt anyone

— Tim Mills (@Tim_Mills_) May 29, 2013

I’ve brought shame to this whole industry

— Tim Mills (@Tim_Mills_) May 29, 2013

In an ironic response to the article, BuzzFeed posted an article Wednesday afternoon with the headline, “10 Llamas Who Wish They Were Models.”

The piece was published by BuzzFeed staff writer Summer Anne Burton, not Mills. The article did mention Mills, though, by linking to The Onion story, saying “with apologies to Tim Mills.”

Photo Credit: For fear of being accused of plagiarism by The Onion or anyone else, this photo came from BuzzFeed.