Gerald Posner of The Daily Beast has resigned following recent allegations of plagiarism.

Posner, who recently broke that texting story in the continuing saga of Elin and Tiger Woods, offered his resignation when Jack Shafer from Slate cited a number of examples of Posner’s alleged plagiarism.

Posner outlined his position on his blog, saying:

I realize how it is that I have inadvertently, but repeatedly, violated my own high standards. The core of my problem was in shifting from that of a book writer – with two years or more on a project – to what I describe as the “warp speed of the net.” For the Beast articles, I created master electronic files, which contained all the information I developed about a topic – that included interviews, scanned documents, published articles, and public information. I often had master files that were 15,000 words, that needed to be cut into a story of 1,000 to 1500 words.

In the compressed deadlines of the Beast, it now seems certain that those master file were a recipe for disaster for me. It allowed already published sources to get through to a number of my final and in the quick turnaround I then obviously lost sight of the fact that it belonged to a published source instead of being something I wrote.

Posner basically says that the speedy world of internet reporting meant his personal standards on original reporting were comprimised, and material he had gathered from other sources and writers which was intended for his own research, wound up in his finished articles.

We repeatedly hear that the 24/7 news cycle has increased pressure on reporters to be the first with the story. Information is so readily available online, it stands to reason that it will increasingly act as the first port of call for journalists researching a story. That said, ease of access to information combined with urgent publishing deadlines, shouldn’t result in accidental plagiarism.

Internet access should not affect the quality of journalism offered, other than to provide a more interactive platform for people to access their news or alternative viewpoints through blogs, extra links, videos, etc. Citing sources and referencing photos are par for the course for journalists, regardless of the medium they work in, so to take advantage of the web to, for example, nab photos from social networking sites without permission and citation, is lazy. So too is rewriting your source material without checking if you’re plagiarising or sending out wholely and genuinely original material.