[Disclosure: Saturday night at a fund raiser for Rae Vogeler, our Green Party candidate for Senate, I picked up two “I Hate Wal-Mart” pins. I put one on my jacket, and brought the other one home to Beth.]

But really… Edelman is supposed to be coached in this web-world stuff by the best. How could they make a bonehead move like this for such an important client? I’m guessing, a) they didn’t ask David Weinberger; or b) they didn’t listen to what he told them.

WHAT DO YOU CALL A phony blog that’s actually a front for a huge corporation? A “flog”?

A pro-Wal-Mart blog called “Wal-Marting Across America,” ostensibly launched by a pair of average Americans chronicling their cross-country travels in an RV and lodging in Wal-Mart parking lots, has been reduced to a farewell entry. One of its two contributors was revealed to be Jim Thresher, a staff photographer for The Washington Post.

The blog, launched Sept. 27, was profiled in this week’s issue of BusinessWeek, which exposed the site as a promotional tactic engineered by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart’s public relations firm Edelman.

Steve Rubel (a PR guy who works for Edelman, another PR guy doing, presumably, PR) shares the following regarding the Pew Internet Project study released today:

As Reuters correctly notes, the research demonstrates that blogging is moving more mainstream, thanks to the surging interest in social network/blog hybrid sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal (MySpace is an Edelman client).

My question is, when is disclosure appropriate, and when is it mere self aggrandizement and name placement? I think the latter obtains in this case, since (first) a careful reading of the Reuters piece does not show them saying anything like what Steve says they said, and (second) neither Reuters nor the Pew study characterize MySpace and LiveJournal as social network/blog hybrid sites. These are Steve Rubel’s words. So it looks like Steve took this opportunity to flog his client’s brand, which would make disclosure appropriate, but the inherent dishonesty in implying that there is movement represented by these static data and the movement is toward Steve’s client should be an embarrassment to everyone. If I managed MySpace I’d pull the account. Who needs that kind of gratuitous misrepresentation?

Update: It has been pointed out to me that this would be a lot clearer if I just said Steve Rubel is full of hooie. Actually, “hooie” was not the word.

Update-update: It has been further pointed out to me that disclosure is not really what I am on about. Rather, it is the relentless floggery.