Babble Blogger Kristin Ruiz Outed for Plagiarizing Amalah’s Posts

http://sheposts.com/content/babble-blogger-kristin-ruiz-outed-for-plagiarizing-amalahs-posts

Yesterday we posted on some of the drama unfolding as http://sheposts.com/content/highway-to-a-social-media-fail-chrysler-and-ignite-social-media-tank-with-mom-blog-contest - the result of a blogger brand campaign for Chrysler .  One of the key players in the controversy was http://www.ourordinarylife.com/ - Kristin Ruiz , who called on Ignite Social Media to disqualify fellow contestant http://www.waitinthevan.com/ - Kristine Cook because of a post in which Kristine jokingly encourages her readers to vote from multiple computers.  It seems that Ruiz herself is now on the other end of cheating accusations, but for reasons that are a bit more clear than questionable contest rules.  It was recently discovered that Ruiz, who writes her own blog in addition to writing a pregnancy column for Babble, has been plagiarizing posts that popular blogger http://www.amalah.com/ - Amy Storch ( https://twitter.com/#%21/amalah - @Amalah ) had written at the http://alphamom.com/ - Alpha Mom site.

Still defending herself against allegations of http://sheposts.com/content/highway-to-a-social-media-fail-chrysler-and-ignite-social-media-tank-with-mom-blog-contest - contest bullying ,  Lesney-Ruiz is accused of lifting content published in 2008 on the Alpha Mom website for publication on her own site Our Ordinary Life. After being hired earlier this year by blogging powerhouse http://www.babble.com/ - Babble as a featured writer, Lesney-Ruiz was said to have re-posted three of these same posts.   Lesney-Ruiz’s assignment at Babble was quite similar to the weekly posts Storch wrote for Alphamom’s pregnancy timeline.  Allegations flew Monday morning when a fan of Amalah.com noticed a striking similarity to one of Lesney-Ruiz’s posts and forwarded it on to Storch. Upon further review, Storch ascertained that a few of Lesney-Ruiz’s posts were actually posts that she had written and published years before. Storch addressed the matter http://www.amalah.com/amalah/2012/03/to-whom-it-may-concern.html - in an open letter this morning , stating:

The writing you stole http://alphamom.com/pregnancy-calendar-overview/ - was written about my second pregnancy . It is all very near and dear to me, and I am fiercely protective of it, as I’m sure you understand. What you did was like someone swiping your belly pics and was passing them off as their own: creepy, invasive and wrong. I imagine if that happened to you, you would waste no time in leading an Internet charge against that person, no matter what excuses they offered.

According to Babble staff, Lesney-Ruiz was immediately fired from Babble, and all posts in question were removed. ShePosts was able to obtain screen shots of a few of the posts in question.  From Kristin’s personal site:

http://www.sheposts.com/images/2012/03/image4.png"> http://www.ourordinarylife.com/2009/06/40-weeks-pregnant/ - (http://www.ourordinarylife.com/2009/06/40-weeks-pregnant)