Martha Stewart Magazine Plagiarizes Itself

While flipping through this year’s Halloween issue of Martha Stewart Living, Mary Findley realized she’d seen this image before. While it would have been tremendously easy to switch the icing to white, swap the bat decorations for ghosts, and change the caption to “ghoulishly good,” the editors decided to run the exact same “scarily sweet” cake that was pictured in the 2008 issue. The New York Times notes that publications repurpose content all the time — the problem is there’s no indication in the magazine that many of the articles are republished.

Company reps said Martha Stewart Living recycles content for the four special issues it puts out every year, and 30 percent of this year’s Halloween magazine is old. The magazine has issued an apology, and Findley got a phone call from Martha herself over the weekend. Findley describes her as “a very nice lady,” and says she was “incredibly apologetic” now that the world knows how her perfectly-formed magazine sausage gets made.