Does "Speed at the Top of the Agenda" Encourage Plagiarism?

Last week New York Times business reporter Zachery Kouwe described his history of plagiarism as unintentional, the result of hurriedly cutting and pasting from his notes. Many wrote it off as a desperate excuse from a guilty man, but for those of us whose jobs require us to produce as much copy as quickly as possible, Kouwe’s words held the uneasy ring of truth. In that mad rush to get a story online, it can be easy to mistake another’s phrase for one’s own.