I am technically on vacation – meaning I work at a more leisurely pace – so I restricted my Internet time to news of Lindsay Lohan (plenty of juicy tidbits), the Yankees (relentlessly depressing), the war (bloody and escalating), and Strumpette (intriguing flare-ups of professional turpitude and personal greed and denial). The highlight to Strumpette last week, of course, was the MWW/Nikon blogola imbroglio that elicited protestations of innocence, condemnations of guilt, and threats to involve the lawyers. You had all the psycho-professional mashup necessary to fuel an uncomfortable discussion about the line between journalism and advocacy, a bribe or favor, high ethics and low greed.

Once more we have an expensive giveaway at the core, a $1,000 (at least) Nikon camera, and the growing, and apparently successful practice of attempting to influence bloggers with gifts or ‘loans.’ The argument that giving 50 bloggers a high-end camera for a 12 month loan is not an attempted bribe is patently absurd (why else would MWW do it?) but that did not stop heated denials from recipients.

K. Paul Mallasch, editor of the Muncie (Indiana) Free Press, and a recipient of the MWW/Nikon giveaway, was particularly incensed by the implication that he was doing something wrong. K. Paul was so thrilled to be chosen as a Nikon recipient that he published a Q&A on his site with Tom Biro of MWW’s DialogueMedia practice about the blogola campaign. Not surprisingly, K. Paul thought the Nikon was great and MWW was populated with geniuses.

Confronted with an unyieldingly prosecutorial Strumpette, K. Paul employed the Ronn “I’m-growing-as-fast-as-I-can” Torossian defense of dismissing the accusations because the true identity of Strumpette is a mystery. “I’ll be talking to my lawyer,” was the final word of K. Paul. Apparently, he did not see the “5WPR Lawsuit Clock” on the sidebar. In a subsequent post, Joseph Jaffe, founder and president of new media consultancy crayon, posted his own defense of receiving the camera.

There is a constituency to consider when crafting these programs – the self-policing PR blogosphere that is adept at flogging any agency that dares attempt to influence bloggers with giveaways. Bloggers are a lonely lot who crave the imprimatur of credibility that can be afforded by the attention of a big agency bearing gifts. The “A-list” bloggers are more immune to this, so the B and C lists are now the targets. It’s cheap publicity that will quickly diminish in effectiveness as criticism takes its toll.

I see no discussion of the Nikon blogola imbroglio on MWW’s DialogueMedia blog authored by Tom Biro and Chris Thilk, or CEO Michael Kempner’s personal blog “MWW Straight Talk.” The MWW site is full of case studies, talk of the MWW way, all the great things they have done, blah, blah, but not a word of reaction to news of its own practices.

This is typical. Agencies have yet to understand that they are as much a part of the news as the messages they are trying to control for their clients. If MWW, Edelman, or any other agency is going to muck around in the New Media world they have to be public and responsive to credible and verifiable concerns about their campaigns. The days of the wizard behind the curtain are gone, and these issues will not simply go away by themselves.

This is a test for MWW. Will they adapt to the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ or bull ahead with the old PR modus operandi of stonewalling the critics? Maybe we’ll see it played out in this blog next week, and in the blogs that MWW/Nikon are trying to influence. Blessed be the provocateurs, for they are keeping us honest.

Mark Rose is editor of PRBlogNews - a web publication focusing on public relations practices in the digital age.