Book Babes: Following in Ruth Shalit's Footsteps

A couple days ago, I noted the NYT article on Harlequin's slump. Now it seems that the Book Babes have taken Edward Wyatt's hard work and used it as an opportunity to get their own two cents in. But before we consider their take on the slump in romance sales, let's look at a very curious case of similarity in language.

Here's how Wyatt describes Red Dress Ink:

Red Dress has had some moderately successful books, but it has not broken into the mainstream like other specialized chick-lit imprints. Those include Delta, the Random House imprint that has published Sophie Kinsella's series of "Shopaholic" novels, and Downtown Press, the Simon & Schuster paperback imprint and publisher of Gigi Levangie Grazer's Maneater.

And here's how Book Babe Margo Hammond put it:

But [RDI] hasn't had nearly as much success as Random House's Delta imprint, which publishes the super-popular (and funny in a goofy kind of way) Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella, nor Pocket Books' Downtown Press, which snagged the more edgy Maneater by Gigi Levangie Grazer.

Now, Hammond does state in the second paragraph that her column springboards from Wyatt's article, and Poynter has provided a link to it. But is that sufficient attribution for the exceedingly similar construction of these two paragraphs? Do Jefferson's adjectival insertions ("super-popular," "goofy") create enough difference in her text that the similarities no longer matter? To me, it looks something like plagiarism, but I have fairly stringent standards in this regard; other writers and editors may feel differently, and are invited to share their thoughts below.