The Mainstream Media Strikes Back

David Schatsky | March 07, 2006, 08:42 PM

I loved the article from today's New York Times about how flacks working for Wal-mart have been cultivating bloggers in order to get positive for the company. Some bloggers were apparently so lazy that they posted verbatim the information fed to them, without attribution, to the point where multiple blogs were carrying near identical text.

I thought blogosphere's job was to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the mainstream media. The terrifying power of the ungovernable blogosphere rose up and took down CBS and 60 minutes and spawned ad networks and big money deals. Now the Times points out how easily bloggers can be coopted to advance the goals of the world's biggest company.

The best parts of the article:

1. Flack's pickup line for the vulnerable blogger:

"If you're interested 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."

That's how it's done, folks.

2. Bloggers' reaction to finding out the Times was doing this story. One of them "pleads for advertisers to buy space on the blog in anticipation of more traffic because of the article."

Media synergy. Gotta love it.