NY Times, Wal-Mart, and bloggers

First off, I just want to say that I’m not going to provide any real links in this post_[1], except for my h/t (The Writing on the Wal and The News Blog) and to the article. I don’t really want to send anymore traffic to these wingers because, well, they’re counting on getting more because of this article. Even though it is Conservative Amnesty Month, I don’t take too kindly to pro-Wallyworld folk ’round these parts.

The NY Times has reported that Wal-Mart pr firm, Edelman, has found bloggers that are Wal-Mart friendly and has agreed to send them ” scoops” of internal Wallyworld info for them to put in their blogs. A couple of these bloggers have used these emails word for word without giving credit to Wal-Mart man, Marshall Manson, for emailing them the information.

Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.

But the strategy raises questions about what bloggers, who pride themselves on independence, should disclose to readers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has been forthright with bloggers about the origins of its communications, and the company and its public relations firm, Edelman, say they do not compensate the bloggers.

But some bloggers have posted information from Wal-Mart, at times word for word, without revealing where it came from.~

~Mr. Manson, identifying himself as a ” blogger myself” who does ” online public affairs for Wal-Mart,” began with a bit of flattery: “Just wanted you to know that your post criticizing Maryland’s Wal-Mart health care bill was noticed here and at the corporate headquarters in Bentonville,” he wrote, referring to the city in Arkansas.

“If you’re interested,” he continued, ” I’d like to drop you the occasional update with some newsworthy info about the company and an occasional nugget that you won’t hear about in the M.S.M.” – or mainstream media.

If you go to the article you will notice that a couple of these blogs, Iowa Voice and Crazy Politicos Rantings, aren’t directly linked. But Instapundit.com and Punditguy.com are linked. I wondered why, then found out.

When they learned that The New York Times was looking at how they were using information from the retailer, several bloggers posted items challenging The Times’s article before it had appeared. One blog, Iowa Voice, run by Mr. Pickrell, pleads for advertisers to buy space on the blog in anticipation of more traffic because of the article._[2]

Now one blogger had mentioned that Wal-Mart didn’t ask them to keep these communications a secret. But please read on to find out what good ol’ Wallyworld has to say about that.

Wal-Mart has warned bloggers against lifting text from the e-mail it sends them. After apparently noticing the practice, Mr. Manson asked them to ” resist the urge,” because “I’d be sick if someone ripped you because they noticed a couple of bloggers with nearly identical posts.”

But Mr. Manson has not encouraged bloggers to reveal that they communicate with Wal-Mart or to attribute information to either the retailer or Edelman, Ms. Williams of Wal-Mart said.

Why wouldn’t the world’s largest retailer want their little dupes telling the world that they were doing good works for Wal-Mart? I mean, they should be proud that they have PR bloggers and don’t have to pay them one red cent. But Wal-Mart doesn’t want to the general public to think that they’re planting their own good will stories (even though they obviously are).

Mr. Pickrell, the 37-year-old who runs the Iowa Voice blog, said he began receiving updates from Wal-Mart in January.~

~Since then, he has written at least three postings that contain language identical to sentences in e-mail from Mr. Manson. In one, which Mr. Pickrell attributed to a ” reader,” he reported that Wal-Mart was about to announce that a store in Illinois received 25,000 applications for 325 jobs.~

~Asked in a telephone interview about the resemblance of his postings to Mr. Manson’s, Mr. Pickrell said: ” I probably cut and paste a little bit and I should not have,” adding that ” I try to write my posting in my own words.”~

I admit that I visited Mr.Pickrell’s blog, because I wanted to see what he had to say about all of this nonsense. I mean, he was outed so now he has to admit to it, right?

That’s in this post. Notice the part in question is in a freakin’ quote box. That means that I didn’t write it. As for who sent it, I don’t recall”¦.but it wasn’t Marshall Manson. It was forwarded to me from another blogger, that much I do remember. It may have originated with Marshall, perhaps, but I either didn’t get or didn’t see the original he sent out.

I knew that Michael Barbaro was going to write this piece of dung called a news article. I was reluctant to even talk to him, given the history of the NYTs and blogs/bloggers. I see I was correct in my reluctance. Never again, brother.

Well, this guy obviously got hung out to dry. Didn’t he? I mean, he didn’t know who that email was coming from. And everybody knows that bloggers don’t give credit when information comes to them via email. Why should they? I mean, it could be bogus and then they’d know about it and then they’d look like”¦well, you get the picture. Mr. Pickrell had no idea that this email came from Wal-Mart HQ. Did he?

See, what this guy is thinking is that Wal-Mart, or their PR guy, wrote up some stuff and sent it to us and said ” here, print this”. That’s not the case at all. They just sent us links to news articles which, quite honestly, we would have found anyway.~

~I said it yesterday: at no point in time did Wal-Mart or Marshall Manson offer us any money. If he had, I’m pretty sure bloggers, as a whole, would have acknowledged that within the posts (we learned our lesson the hard way).

That’s from a post prior to the one where Mr.Pickrell denies knowing who sent him that email. Damn, I keep forgetting I’m not supposed to check this stuff out. I am, afterall, a blogger- and we don’t check anything out.

But did Barbaro lie about him asking for money? I’m sure he did.

So here’s the deal:

I have 4 banner ads available. Go here for more details. If you’re interested, shoot me an email. Also, I’ve got spots open (as you can see) in the BlogAds area.

With the pending New York Times article coming out either this week or next, this is your chance to buy some ads and take advantage of the (hopefully huge) increase in traffic. =D

I hate being wrong.

Some of you may know that I #1- hate Wal-Mart and #2- hate visiting winger blogs (they hurt my eyes) so you’re probably wondering what I was doing parsing this poor guy’s postings. Well, because I love to laugh, of course. And because he made it so damned easy. I mean, he said today that he didn’t know Wal-Mart was behind those emails (and, dammit, he put stuff from them in quotes). Then we see that he did know. Finally, hilarity ensues at Gratis’ house because she loves it when wingers get caught in bold-faced lies. That’s why I’m writing this particular post. Not to laugh at Wal-Mart’s ill-fated attempts to manipulate the blogosphere, but at the blogs they were using (one, by the way, is RedState. Good representation there, huh?).

The PunditGuy did admit that he was using Wal-Mart’s hype on his blog. He’s quite proud of it, now that he’s been outed. I give him credit for that and, thus, didn’t dive to deep into his mind. However, he too seems to think that bloggers shouldn’t have any kind of ” ethics” when reporting ” news”.

Mr. Barbaro spoke to me on the telephone last week as he was preparing his story. We spoke about my relationship with Manson and my feelings about Wal-Mart. During the conversation it became clear to me that Barbaro was missing important information about bloggers and the blogosphere we populate. I explained that there are few rules, if any. There isn’t a code of ethics other than the heart and soul of each individual blogger. There are a wide variety of blogging styles; the copy-and-pasters, the linkers, and those who write then cite.

On this blog, I do both_[3]. Sometimes the published story is the best way to communicate my message, and when that’s the case, I’ll copy and paste a lot of it within the article I’m posting. Other times, a simple linked headline is enough. That’s the blogosphere. It isn’t the newsroom of America’s largest newspaper.

I don’t get any good scoops that someone else hasn’t already blogged about, so I don’t have to worry about letting people know that I’m getting emails from Wal-Mart or anyone else for that matter. Still, I think if you’re using Wal-Mart’s material verbatim on your site then maybe you should let someone know. Or at least spice it up a bit. No skeletons stay hidden forever, someone will always find out. Better not look like a complete fool when it does come out.

I think that Wallyworld should continue to use winger blogs to promote it’s evil agenda. Soon enough no one will take either of them seriously anymore.

_{[1] Feel free to find them yourself or perhaps just take my word for it.}

[2] And now you know why I don’t want to link to them.

[3] Huh?