Mike Allen
Politico
5-25-2008

THE
DRUDGE EFFECT — The Clinton traveling press view from Matt Phillips on
The Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” blog — “Some reporters
found the streamed broadcast of the editorial meeting excruciatingly
slow, rendering it unwatchable. It didn’t seem that there would be any
huge news out of a routine sitdown with the editors of a small-town
daily … Clinton concluded her meeting at the Argus Leader and arrived
at the supermarket, where a few hundred onlookers assembled in the
produce section, when the RFK comments began to reverberate around the
Internet. As the New York senator was delivering her stump speech in
the grocery store, reporters began receiving messages on their
BlackBerrys from editors wondering about a New York Post story posted
prominently on the Drudge Report that referenced the senator’s mention
of the assassination.

“The bulk of the press corps soon gathered
around a Clinton spokesman asking for comments and clarification on the
Kennedy quotes. Seemingly taken aback by the direction the questions
were going, the spokesman explained that Clinton had merely been trying
to emphasize the point that Democratic primary fights had stretched
into June in the past. … The fact that it did become big news is
illustrative of journalistic competition in the Internet age. The
entire pack of reporters sent to watch Clinton’s every move had somehow
gotten beat, and forced into following a New York Post reporter who was
nowhere near the campaign, but who, apparently, had a much-better
Internet connection.”

Obama in an interview with Radio Isla
Puerto Rico, via Chicago Tribune: "I have learned that when you are
campaigning for as many months as Sen. Clinton and I have been
campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that
you make, and I think that is what happened here. … Sen. Clinton says
that she did not intend any offense by it, and I will take her at her
word on that."

http://www.politico.com/playbook/0508/playbook316.html