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Cooks Source Editor Rips Off Writer, Calls All of Web 'Public Domain'

by Terrence O'Brien on November 6, 2010 at 09:01 AM

Cooks SourceJudith Griggs, the editor of Cooks Source -- a recipe magazine based out of Sunderland, Massachusetts -- broke one of the two cardinal rules of publishing: don't plagiarize. (The other being don't make stuff up.) Monica Gaudio, a freelance writer and college student, claims that Cooks Source stole an article she posted about apple pies and reprinted it without her permission. Rather than deny the accusation, Griggs fired back a rather haughty e-mail, in which she claimed that anything posted online is, essentially, up for grabs. The Web, Griggs informed Gaudio, "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!" (Read the entire insane e-mail here.) Moreover, Griggs contended that rather than pay Gaudio for her article, the student should pay her for editing her "poorly written" piece. Let's just say that this did not sit well with Gaudio, or the reading public as a whole.

Griggs quickly found herself on the receiving end of a torrent of hate. The magazine's Facebook page was inundated with negative remarks, some pointedly stating that Griggs clearly doesn't understand copyright law, while others resorted to simple vulgarity and name-calling. The publication's Facebook page was eventually hacked and hijacked, leading Cooks Source to start a new page, which is already attracting a fair share of negative attention.

Before abandoning the original page, Griggs supposedly published this apology on the original Cooks Source Facebook page, which thanked the pissed-off author and said: "You did find a way to get your 'pound of flesh...' we used to have 110 'friends,' we now have 1,870... wow!" It's unclear if it was in fact Griggs who posted the message, or if it was left by the hackers. (The apology is being linked to by the new Cooks Source page, though, so we suspect it's legit.) But Griggs has not responded to allegations that she has previously stolen other articles, from the likes of Martha Stewart and NPR. And the few public comments she has made have been combative, claiming that her attackers "don't understand a few basics, yet they seem to all be experts in the print business."

Tags: cookssource, facebook, judith griggs, JudithGriggs, monica gaudio, MonicaGaudio, plagiarism, web

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