Still another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart

Found via Oliver Willis on likely my very last visit there.

You can't buy the Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore[, the paper reported on Sunday].

The store ordered us off their property, told us to come pick up our newspaper racks and clear out.

What was the paper's crime? Last month, one of its columnists, Mark O'Brien, wrote a piece that included some unflattering references to the company, including noting that

[m]any Wal-Mart employees lack the fringe benefits and insurance that makes the difference between existence and a good quality of life.

He called Pensacola "a Wal-Mart kind of town, 'cheap and comfy on the surface, lots of unhappiness and hidden costs underneath.'"

And Wal-Mart didn't like it. So Bob Hart, some regional high corporate mucky-muck, called the editor and complained.

Mr. Hart ... said he and his stores couldn't tolerate a newspaper that would print the opinions of someone who was as mean and negative as Mark O'Brien. ... Mr. Hart said he wanted the newspaper to get its racks off his lots. But he also said that if I fired Mark, we could talk about continuing to sell the newspaper at his stores.

Fire him not because what he wrote was wrong - but because he wrote it. He criticized us, so you will be punished unless you silence him.

The result?

Mark still has a job and you can't buy a Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.

And I lift a cyberglass in salute of a newspaper that shows that integrity has not completely vanished from the profession.