Rosen suggested that "in purely statistical terms, [...] the articles in the Montgomery County Bulletin [may] amount to the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism".

“The mistake I made was not working fast enough for Jody Rosen and apparently I needed to be punished for it.”[2] Ladyman announced he was shutting down The Bulletin', and blamed Williams for the plagiarism.

Williams himself published a bitter and sarcastic open letter to Rosen in which he wrote, describing himself as the victim of the critic's quest for blogosphere fame: "Of course, you are certainly owed an apology, but one has to ponder for a moment just why that is; after all, you have most definitely garnered the attention of the bloggers that you evidently crave in abundance with this manufactured scandal."

Williams claimed that he had not intentionally plagiarized articles but had simply used press kit material without realizing that they included work of other journalists: "I did so thinking it was cleared for such use; but, as [Rosen] so subtly pointed out, I was mistaken.

In the conclusion of his piece, Rosen quipped "Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerrilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.