And returns his Orwell Prize for past sins:
The worst part of this for me has been thinking about two sets of people. The first are all the readers over the years who have come up to me and told me they like my articles and believe in the causes and the people I’ve been championing. I hate to think of those people feeling let down, because those causes urgently need people to stand up for them, and they need their defenders. The second are the people here at The Independent, whom I have watched for the past eight years working phenomenally hard to get their stories right and to produce world-class journalism. I am horrified to think that what I have done has detracted from the way they get it right every day. I am sorry…I am going to take an unpaid leave of absence from The Independent until 2012, and at my own expense I will be undertaking a programme of journalism training.
The report on his alleged plagiarism convicted him only of sloppiness, and the charge against his reporting in one instance were counter-balanced by two sources who backed him up. The Independent concluded there was no solid evidence he had made anything up. Nonetheless, the meddling with Wikipedia under an alias was deeply dumb, and Johann has done the right thing here. I hope after a period in which he is not so frantically working at writing copy, he'll return with guns blazing (and a clear, online tape recording of every interview he'll ever do).
The Dish 