RSC Partners, Inc.

The New York Times writes a highly critical but silly piece today on bloggers who have taken information from WalMart’s PR agency and posted the information on their sites.

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.

Glenn Reynolds, the founder of Instapundit.com, one of the oldest blogs on the Web, said that even in the blogosphere, which is renowned for its lack of rules, a basic tenet applies: “If I reprint something, I say where it came from. A blog is about your voice, it seems to me, not somebody else’s.”

At the heart of the story is criticism of IowaVoice blogger Brian Pickrell. Apparently he had cut-and-pasted copy from an email sent by P.R. firm about WalMart. I understand why as an ethical consideration, plagiarism is bad. As a blogger, if I am quoting someone else, you’ll see it in “blockquotes” even if it comes from an email they sent. Yet, as someone who has sent out press releases for years, I have seen smaller newspapers and magazines (with circulation similar to a medium-sized blog readership) reprint press releases word-for-word and call them articles. Does that make the cut-and-paste practice excusable? No. But I have to wonder when the New York Times will run a front page story on the local fish-wrapper!

Likewise, the Times makes itself look silly by implying that bloggers ought to be revealing the origin of their information—such as who sent them the sources or story ideas they link to. Hogwash. When was the last time you read the Times or any mainstream paper tell you that they were contacted by the MWW Group, Fleishmann Hillard or Hill and Knowlton?

To cast aspersions on the blogosphere or mainstream media as a whole because of these cases would be a mistake.

As blogs get taken more seriously, businesses, politicians and others will start taking notice. As they do, there will be a new market for public relations firms to facilitate the conversation between them. At RSC Partners, we believe that time has come.