Editor's snarky email goes viral

[Liberal_in_LA]

Food magazine gets roasted online over copyright claim

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She said she learned about it when a friend congratulated her for being published on the site. Gaudio responded that she had never heard of it and that the article in question -- which detailed medieval pie recipes -- had been written for her own site.

She hunted Cooks Source down and proposed a solution: Donate $130, the equivalent of 10 cents per word, to the Columbia School of Journalism as payment.

What really set the internet aflame, however, was the response she said she got from editor Judith Griggs.

Gaudio said Griggs wrote her an e-mail that read: "onestly Monica, the Web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!"

"It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace.

"If you took offense and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally."

Gaudio said the language that was edited was the medieval-style English used in the recipes. She wrote that Griggs went on to tell her the article is now fit to be used in her portfolio and said, perhaps joking, that because the magazine "put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!"

That's where the internet jumped in. A friend and fellow blogger first wrote about the incident.

The story was "voted up" to the main page of popular news-sharing site Reddit. Another blogger weighed in under the headline, "World's Dumbest Editor Incurs The Wrath Of The Internet."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/11/05/cooks.source.plagiarism/index.html?hpt=T2