Maybe the New York Times should let reporter Katie Hafner cover philanthropy instead of the reporters who shot blanks at Wal-Mart. In one of the more insightful pieces about the "new" philanthropy, Hafner gives us an analysis of Google's approach:

By choosing for-profit status, Google will have to pay taxes if company shares are sold at a profit — or if corporate earnings are used — to finance Google.org. Any resulting venture that shows a profit will also have to pay taxes. Shareholders may not like the fact that the Google.org tax forms will not be made public, but kept private as part of the tax filings of the parent, Google Inc.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, believe for-profit status will greatly increase their philanthropy’s range and flexibility. It could, for example, form a company to sell the converted cars, finance that company in partnership with venture capitalists, and even hire a lobbyist to pressure Congress to pass legislation granting a tax credit to consumers who buy the cars.

Google's latest innovation: Rendering the charitable tax-exemption uncool.

I generally fall in the category of people who think, when the history is written, Wal-Mart will have done more harm than good to the overall well-being of the country. But if you're going to actually go after the big-box demon at least bring some logic and a few relevant facts.

I read the New York Times story last Friday insinuating Wal-Mart was paying off conservative think tanks with grants from the Walton Family Foundation, the private giving arm of the family that owns the company. The story alleged that, in exchange for grants, the think tanks placed Op-Eds in newspapers stating support for Wal-Mart's business practices.

The evidence was pretty thin. Two-and-a-half-million over six years went to conservative groups; this from a foundation that gave away more than $100 million in 2004 alone. All the grants cited in the story were, as the article states, tiny percentages of the recipient organizations' overall fundraising for any given year [$100k to the American Enteprise Institute over three years; AEI raised $24 million in 2004]. Every other graph contained a fact that eroded the underlying premise of the story.

The only element of the story that seemed to have relevance was the "fact" that the Op-Ed contributors didn't disclose they had received some dough from the company. That is, until this classic correction appeared today:

An article in Business Day on Friday reported that the Walton Family Foundation had made contributions to four conservative research groups whose analysts wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart Stores for newspapers and journals around the country. The Times article said that the groups and their employees had consistently failed to disclose the donations, and it said in the first paragraph that the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research was one of them. But a Manhattan Institute author had told The Times that he had indeed disclosed contributions from the Walton Foundation in an article he wrote, a fact that should have been included in the Times article.

The article also reported that Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation and Karl Zinsmeister, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, were among those who wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart after their foundations received a donation.

Both those groups were called for comment for the Times article. Mr. Kane, who was not called, subsequently said that he did not know about the Walton Family Foundation contribution and that he had criticized Wal-Mart’s call for a higher federal minimum wage in an article he wrote. The Times also did not ask Mr. Zinsmeister to comment, but he declined to do so when reached after the Times article was published. Both Mr. Kane and Mr. Zinsmeister should have been asked to comment before publication.

Way to stick a fork in any credibility in your future reporting of Wal-Mart and its corporate giving. A little ecstasy for the wingers.