• by Tom Siebert , October 13, 2006

The Washington Post photographer who covertly operated the travel blog "Wal-Marting Across America" will have to reimburse the Wal-Mart support organization that paid for the trip and its expenses, the newspaper said.

James Thresher, a 25-year veteran of the Post, violated the paper's policy about working for public interest groups and will refund approximately $2,200 to Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched and operated by Wal-Mart's public relations agency Edelman. WFWM provided a branded RV, and paid food and other travel expenses to Thresher and his partner Laura St. Claire as they anonymously chronicled their journey across the country.

Howard Kurtz, media critic at the Post, divulged Thursday that Thresher had agreed to repay the expenses. Kurtz also revealed that St. Claire's brother is an Edelman employee.

The fake blog, or "flog," was credited to "Jim" and "Laura," and presented as a folksy travelogue by two ordinary Americans who parked their RV nightly in Wal-Mart parking lots and met numerous, universally upbeat big-box employees and customers. Although a WFWM banner ad trumpeted its sponsorship of the site, it did not mention that Wal-Mart paid for the couple's RV, gas, food and other expenses.

Thresher told Kurtz that he considered the trip a "vacation lark in which his only role was to drive the RV and to take a few pictures."

The Post insisted that Thresher's photographs be removed--and they were, along with all but two written entries, credited to Laura.

But a Google cache of the site reveals numerous promotional entries credited to "Jim," including one that describes a shopper who "loves the convenience of shopping for everything she needs in one place at....Wal-Mart." Another reads: "Nicole Brown is quick to praise her manager Stephan Gordon for making her working environment so positive."

When alerted to Thresher's entries on the blog, Kurtz re-interviewed Thresher. The photographer told him that St. Claire wrote some entries using Thresher's laptop, which mistakenly appeared under his name. "He did not change his stance that he'd done none of the writing for the blog," Kurtz told OnlineMediaDaily.

Thresher and St. Claire did not return phone calls for comment. But St. Claire did update the "flog" one last time early Thursday, offering an extended defense of their motives. She wrote that she and Thresher were being "attacked...because we dared write positive things about Wal-Mart," and alleged that there is a "vicious....organized Wal-Mart opposition group." In the entry, she also acknowledges that her brother works for Edelman, and one of his clients is Working Families for Wal-Mart.

But one expert says the problem isn't Wal-Mart's enemies, but the company's attempts to pass off a corporate-affiliated site as consumer-generated media.

"What would they lose to have said, 'we're sending two people around the country to talk to people at Wal-Mart,'" says corporate blogging consultant Debbie Weil, author of "The Corporate Blogging Book." "It could have even been funny--they could have made it self-deprecating, really loosened up and it would have been so much more effective as a PR strategy. Instead, they went with that whole Madison Avenue lie that everything is perfect, which people can't stand."

Donna Lewis Johnson, a spokesperson for WFWM, said: "We exceeded goals for traffic to the site," and suggested that all other questions could be answered by St. Claire's latest entry.