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SAN JOSE — The San Jose Mercury News has fired a reporting intern who had been suspended for plagiarism, after more evidence of copying work from other publications was discovered. 

The paper said it suspended intern David Cragin on Dec. 28 after discovering that parts of a story he wrote Dec. 26 about San Francisco’s high housing costs appeared to be lifted from a recent article in the Washington Post. 

A review of all of Cragin’s work at the Mercury News revealed he also plagiarized work from other publications, including a San Francisco Chronicle article published three years ago. 

“Plagiarism is unacceptable in our newspaper and in our business,” Managing Editor Susan Goldberg wrote in a memo to newspaper staff.  

“It is an inherent violation of the trust we have with our readers and with our professional colleagues.” 

The paper said it began to investigate Cragin after a reporter from the Chronicle called to question similarities in the two articles. 

In December, the Mercury News investigated whether former intern Eric Drudis fabricated sources in stories he wrote for the paper. 

“It’s obviously a case where the oversight broke down,” University of California, Berkeley journalism professor Thomas C. Leonard told the Chronicle. “That’s a question the Mercury News will want to address, since they’ve had two unfortunate cases recently.” 

The Mercury News reported that Cragin said he read the Washington Post’s Nov. 27 story about families living in cramped hotel rooms before filing his own story. 

The beginning of Cragin’s story mirrors the Post’s story almost word for word. 

“I know it’s pretty similar obviously, but that’s just a small piece of the story,” the Mercury News quoted Cragin as saying. 

Cragin graduated from San Francisco State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and worked for Bay City News Service before joining the San Francisco bureau of the Mercury News last summer.