The Left is roaring about this story:
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.
Criminy, to hear the outrage--which seeps into the NYT piece--you'd think Wal-Mart was hacking into blog sites the posting their own material. Quite frankly, this story probably illustrates why Wal-Mart is number one: they keep thinking and evolving, they use the new resources available. This is a highly clever marketing strategy, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. The bloggers know the information is coming from Wal-Mart. They can use it or not. I simply don't see the big deal.
Regular readers, by the way, probably recall that I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart. I don't like its ravenous appetite that seems to want to dominate every industry--pharmacy, optometry, grocery, gasoline--in small towns. But the Left's unbounded hate for the retailer, which is frequently irrational, makes me sympathetic.
