Good PR schools were teaching the value of quickly and honestly communicating with audiences long before the spotlight of blogs forced people to think about responding to a situation in immediate terms.
It's not a new or novel concept pioneered by blogging--transparency and immediacy have been cornerstones of traditional pr training for a long time.
Consider one of the more famous PR case studies: the Tylenol poisonings of the early 1980s. Johnson and Johnson showed corporate America how to quickly and honestly communicate with their publics in the face of a crippling crisis. The company's response was lightening-fast and focused on public safety, not the company. Instant credibility was established by making the CEO the point man for the crisis, not a lower executive. Under circumstances that would surely have killed another company, J&J immediately regained the trust of its customers and Tylenol has been medicine cabinet staple ever since.
Now, we're not suggesting the Wal-Marting Across America crisis is on par with a case of poisonings, but how quickly the crisis was addressed by Edelman and Steve Rubel (who discloses on Micropersuasion that he has never billed any time to the Wal-Mart account--a tough pill to swallow in and of itself) is a case study in how PR professionals sometimes stray afield of their own counsel.
Steve (although he's not billing) says it took a number of days to respond because there was a process to follow; facts had to be gathered to find out exactly what happened so that the posts could deal with the issues from an informed position (see previous link).
What's interesting about this explanation is Edelman had the facts to begin with--they created the blog, hired the bloggers and initially set the wheels in motion. There was nothing to gather, no data to vet, everything material to the campaign was already in hand. So explanations to the contrary don't quite make sense.
What stalled the response to the discovery of the fake blog, then? More likely it was a scrambling to gauge the depth of the crisis, determine how badly Wal-Mart would be harmed and how far into it Edelman would be pulled. This sort of stunt continues to harm the PR profession. Rubel (whom we've read for a long time--whether or not we agreed with him), has been preaching transparency and immediacy for large companies for a long, long time.
The comments section of his Edelman/Wal-Mart post offers priceless lessons for PR professionals trying to get a sense of what's right and wrong in online PR. Use it as a guide to help find your own way. Just don't forget the basics--online PR is a different animal than pre-blog PR, but it's very much the same in many respects. Good PR programs keep both models in mind.