Who doesn't love Wal-Mart? I mean, how could you not? They roll back prices, they have happy retirees welcome you to the store, they refuse to promote women, they ban books and music from their stores based on their own ideas of propriety...it's nearly a utopia. Unfortunately for one Washington Post photographer, Jim Thresher, his and his lover Laura's blogumentary of their all-expense paid trip across our great nation resulted in a roll back of his personal income and a stern word from Len Downie.

According to several stories linked from Consumerist, Jim and Laura happened upon a sea of RV's in a Wal-Mart parking lot on their vacation in Arizona. This piqued their interest in seeing the country's Wal-Marts in a moving house, and they wound up giving a Wal-Mart fronted PR group, Working Families for Wal-Mart, a call to see if it would be O.K. if they could write a story about it for an RV magazine. Seizing the opportunity, Wal-Mart offered to foot the bill! What a deal! Free RV, free gas and expenses, covered blogging costs, and of course, free rein to park overnight in any Wal-Mart parking lot they came across.

Surprisingly, the blog, Wal-Marting Across America, carried tons of uplifting stories about how every Wal-Mart is a huge pulsing unicorn-pasture of happiness. It also carried posts that mesh with Wal-Mart's PR goals, like one story about a nutritionist buying organic milk, when Wal-Mart's PR push on organics has been well-documented. Uncanny that a simple blog about a trip across the U.S. would echo Wal-Mart's talking points so well. Hmm.

When the Post found out that the blog was clearly a paid effort to improve Wal-Mart's image, they forced Thresher to remove his pictures from the blog and required him to pay back all the expenses from the journey. Given the crappy mileage of RVs, the 3,000 mile trip runs somewhere close to $2,000 just in gas. Ouch. You can find the cached version here, but I don't know how long it will last.

Laura has her defense up on the site now, and Working Families for Wal-Mart hasn't responded to the dust up, though it does have a deliciously ironic link designed to “expose the paid critics.” The slap on the wrist and repayment is sufficient discipline, I think, but can we expect more of this from media pros? Next thing you know, television journalists will be signing up to be press flaks for the White House.

Update: It's come to our attention that local group Wal-Mart Watch employed their mad Google skills to be the first to uncover the fact that Jim was an employee of the Post. We certainly didn't mean to slight their sleuthiness, and are happy to credit them for starting this fire.

Picture from flickr user Brave New Films.