Today’s edition of the New York Times contains a story about the relationship of three characters, the gist of which bears all the resemblance of the classic struggle that occurs when individuals suddenly find themselves intertwined with one another. This menage et toi is one filled with high drama, doubt, suspicion, and jealousy. It’s about insiders and outsiders; friends and enemies. But a problem exists for the reader of this story. Like the patron who enters the theatre in the middle of Act 3, the reader will find it difficult to identify this drama as either a tragedy or comedy, and as such, they will have to quickly distinguish the good guys from the bad. Eventually that reader, in his sole discretion, will choose whose side he’s on.
The characters in this story are a public relations firm working for the largest corporate retailer in America, a reporter working for the largest newspaper in America, and a cache of independent writers. The actors are Mr. Marshall Manson of Wal-Mart PR firm Edelman, Michael Barbaro of The New York Times, and Bloggers. That’s where I come into the story.
I’m not going to go through an exhaustive replay of all the twists and turns on this. It’s easy enough to get caught up. Feel free to read past stories from Barbaro to understand the NYT position on Wal-Mart. Likewise, it’s just as easy to read what other pro Wal-Mart bloggers have to say about this matter. As for me, I’m simply going to give insight into my part in this play.
The New York Times has for the the last couple of months focused on the corporate practices of Wal-Mart, it’s leadership, and now one of the public relations firms it employs. In today’s story, Barbaro finds that the retailer has enlisted the help of individual bloggers who have previously identified themselves as being sympathetic to Wal-Mart’s cause. Barbaro questions the independence of the bloggers who receive pro Wal-Mart news from Mr. Manson. He questions our ability to be objective, our disclosure practices, and wonders if we are really nothing more than robotic echo chambers for the corporate home office.
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.
I’m a conservative, and my blog postings reflect this position.
I am a member of a group of bloggers who receive emailed information from Marshall Manson concerning Wal-Mart. I accepted an invitation to receive the story tips and I decide which ones interest me and which don’t. I’ve never been compensated by Edelman, Manson, Wal-Mart or The New York Times. I’ve never been offered compensation to write any blog article.
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 a little of everything. 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.
Barbaro has heard something about bloggers. He understands us to be unpaid citizen journalists who are quick to point out our biases. Yet he kept questioning me on my independence, and asked whether I ‘felt’ bad or good about the idea that I might be perceived to be in Wal-Mart’s pocket. Their lacky, if you will. I made it clear to him that I have never felt any pressure to spin the few Wal-Mart focused blog posts I’ve written in either direction. All throughout the interview, I sensed a sort of bewilderment in Barbaro. To his credit, he wasn’t condescending. He didn’t come after me for being rather harsh to him in a recent article I wrote. He didn’t try to minimize the effect bloggers have had on this story, or any other. He just sort of hung there with me, puzzling and puzzling, trying to relate. It was clear that this New York Times reporter was navigating uncharted waters.
I don’t think it is evil for corporations to enlist bloggers to amplify their message. If the blogger decides to push the message along, it’s his or her choice. Conversely, if a blogger chooses to counter that message, again, it’s their choice. If a blogger has a passion for a particular topic and they write a lot about it, it’s possible that first time readers could assume the blogger’s professional interests somehow intersect. In the blogosphere, that’s usually a bad assumption to make. I have a feeling that Mr. Barbaro read many of our blogs for the first time while doing research on this piece. In many ways he jumped to conclusions about who we are and what we do.
On the issue of disclosure, if I include information from other sources, I link it. If I am introduced to stories from sources via email and I decide to blog about them, I go to the linked web pages and cite them for my article. I don’t typically mention or credit the individual who emailed me. It’s as simple as that.
I alone choose what I blog about. When I receive tips from people, I consider each, but I quickly abandon the ones that don’t interest me. If representatives from TARGET stores wanted to send positive news stories to me, I’d accept the invitation and read the tips. Big or small, it wouldn’t matter who the corporate entity was. The same conditions would apply. I make the call.
You can read each Wal-Mart focused blog post I’ve written by viewing my search page here.
My final Wal-Mart experience:
November 2005
We went shopping today at one of the ten or so local Wal-Mart stores here in Mesa, Arizona today. I finished my shopping first and went to the car to lock the stuff in the trunk before I went back to search for my wife. As I was walking in the food section, I heard the most terrible screams of pain you can imagine. I went over to see what was happening and there were four large men sitting on some girl! One had his knee in her back, and kept bouncing it into her spine. Another was sitting on her butt and had pinned her feet. Yet another was pinning her hand with his foot while the fourth hero had the other hand pinned to the floor. Every time she screamed in agony, the creep with his knee in her back would tell her to shut up and put her through even more agony.
My reaction was to approach and tell the brutal bastards that there was nothing of enough value in that store to do such things to her. At that time four more of the Wally-Wurld goons showed up and started to menace me. Naturally, I told them that they were all just a bunch of Gestapo crap , and I swear if I was still as healthy as I was in the past, I would have tried to educate them in the finer arts of pain application. Next some old bag of wind came up and told me that she was about to call the cops on me! I told her to get out of my reach before I ripped her head off and then crapped on the stump for good measure!
When I finally went outside, after telling everyone concerned in NO uncertain terms that they sucked the Big One, the first thing I saw was a police helicopter circling the store at a very low altitude, as if one of those escaped felons had just been seen! What a hell of a waste of my tax dollars. Probably thousands of dollars if you include all of the cops that also arrived on the ground! All for one little girl that was being abused in such a manner that it had been one of my own, I would certainly exact a revenge upon those bastards that the next time they, or their ilk, would have second thoughts about treating another human in such a manner.
I am sure glad that my Christmas shopping, for the most part, remains to be done. I am 100% certain that it won’t be at Wal-Mart….. Not for Christmas, and not for another item, for any reason, for as long as I live….So help me God!
Hi, thanks for helping us at WalMart get our company’s true message out there. There’ll be a little something extra in your envelope this week.
Regards,
Sam, Jr.
Dave, you are either a liar or a crappy satirist…either way, your story is pure fabrication. No retailer, including evil ol’ WalMart, will allow any member of their staff to physically confront a shoplifter, let alone pin them to the floor and bounce a knee into their spine. Nice try, though, I loved the part about the helicopter and swarms of police officers that arrived to handle a shoplifter. Did a SWAT team set snipers up as well, you lying sack of crap?
Oh, and your website is shite.
For a guy that defends the outing of Valerie Plame, you’re sure sensitive about being outed as a corporate whore yourself.
Um just so you know, in the karma world, covert CIA agent working on WMD >> random blogger corporate whore
No matter what, Wal-Mart still represents what is worst about our society…..people out to make huge amounts of money by taking advantage of poor people and using a lion’s share of the earth’s resources. And the worst part has to be that there are still so many of US (who are not in the huge money crowd) who will buy their argument that they are out for the good of the community….we still work there and shop there, turning deaf ears and blind eyes to the economic and moral realities that Wal-Mart represents. I don’t believe that any one single person who works or shops at Wal-Mart means to do harm or disrespect the earth, but the whole thing has roled up into a huge system that has taken on a life of its own, a life that has no care for anything but itself.
You call yourself a blogger and you act as a cheap shill for Wal-Mart?
What the hell is the matter with you?
Wal-Mart is one of the biggest threats facing our country today. See any of the various documentaries out there for details. The damage Wal-Mart causes occurs on many different levels of our economy, and now it looks like the bastard corporation is screwing up the blogosphere, too.
So tell us, PunditGuy: Since you can’t technically be a whore without being paid, what exactly ARE you?
You must’ve put on your ‘freak’ cologne this morning (save Jesse) cuz these comments are dripping of Kennedy Kool-Aid or The Old Grey Hag/Rag has issued it’s marching orders.
It is amazing to me how any American citizen, conservative or not, can stand up and support a company that regularly screws Americans. From taking jobs from Americans by hiring illegals & wiping out the small businesses that made America great to screwing those legitimate citizens they do employ, Wal-Mart represents everything that is wrong with this country today.
I would like nothing more than to tear down every piece-of-shit Wal-Mart and replace it with a park. That is something that every town needs, not a Wal-Mart.
You sicken me, and your kind will be running for the hills after the elections, when the REAL Americans stand up and take this country back from the worthless corporate scum and their political whores.
JP said: “…wiping out the small business that made America great.”
Um, what makes America great is that college dropouts, Silicon Valley geeks, and hicks from Arkansas can create businesses like Microsoft, Google, and Wal-Mart from scratch.
A quick U.S. history lesson will teach even the most liberal soul that technological advances (telegraph, railroad, etc.) and small businesses growing into big businesses grew America from little upstart to the most envied economy of opportunity in the world.
Of course, we could always return the U.S. to the Native Americans. Then liberals could begin protesting the slaughter of bison as ‘inhumane’ and lobby for equal rights for all the squaws. That is, of course, until they were all scalped for pushing their enlightened views and being out of touch with mainstream Native America.
So I just read a bunch of coments talking about how Wal-Mart in some way hinders the economy of this lovely country. And if that were the case, I wouldn’t like Mr. Walton’s creation either. However, if that were the case, Wal-Mart wouldn’t even exist! Wal-Mart relies on market participation, on you and me and others going to the store and choosing to buy there. There are many Mom&Pop stores and corner markets that can be selected to shop at, but they are expensive and don’t have everything a shopper needs (fancy that!). It is for that reason that Wal-Mart has succeeded; Wal-Mart has tapped into the desire of the American way.
People want to have the freedom to buy what they want when they want it, and at a cheap price. That is the economics of it, not that jobs are stolen and forced overseas. People ultimately have the choice of where they are going to shop and what they are willing to pay. Wal-Mart captured economies of scale and took the reward of their first-mover advantage to the bank. Furthermore, they give back to the community millions of dollars, and that is millions more than they have to. More than civic responsibility, Steve Jobs, the Waltons and Bill Gates are the ones who foster an environment of further developing the system that enabled them to become so successful. If we, in turn, establish restrictions to their efforts, not only will their charity and huge addition to our economy be lost, but their place will be taken by others, who may not be as focused on investing in human capital and future development. Instead of whining anout some humanitarian ideals that are neither productive nor logical, I would rather thank Wal-Mart, count my blessings, and continue benefitting.
great post! hack!
HI,
I have just sent in the final edit of my book, “The Walmart Way” Not Sam’s Way to the publisher. Hopefully it will be out in a few months if not sooner online.
Thanks,
Julie
Notice that those who disagree with Wal-Mart have little more than insults and empty rhetoric.
I find it amazing that the anti Walmart Crowd isn’t really as big as they make it seem.
At least there are not that many people walking the streets with tinfoil hats so there can’t really be too many of ’em around…
Good post. I agree. I get some news from some source I post it if it interests me. I try to differentiate between the info with links/sources and my opinions. Glad to see you do too.
It is amazing that no one considers that sometimes things happen.
As a Walmart associate for more than seven years I can say that someitmes loss prevention gets out of hand.
Lawsuits show it.
Finally the book… The Walmart Way Not Sam’s Way has been released on xlibris.com