Compare and Contrast: Obama Versus Hillary On Drudge
April 4, 2007 -- 12:31 PM EST // // Post a Comment
Let's do this comparison just for fun.
Barack Obama just announced his fundraising numbers today, as you know. He went the conventional route, leaking the info to CNN, the Associated Press and MSNBC just before sending out a release. No leak to Matt Drudge. All he gets from Drudge is this measly headline:
Meanwhile, a few days earlier Camp Hillary went for the all-out Drudge splash, beginning its media rollout with a "detailed and accurate leak" to Drudge, according to this account, and was apparently rewarded with this:
And...it won't have mattered in the long run one little bit. That wonderful headline and whatever impact it had on press coverage of her fundraising numbers have now been completely wiped away by Obama's numbers today, which speak for themselves without Drudge's megaphone -- and hence will get covered as glowingly as Hillary's did, perhaps more so.
Moral of the story: In the end, maybe getting such a big Drudge headline is meaningless, really. Maybe Matt Drudge Doesn't Rule Our World, after all. Maybe reality sometimes trumps Drudge in the end. Just a thought.
Update: Andrew Sullivan offers an interesting take on the differences between their approaches.
Update II: Several commenters have asked whether it's been fully established whether the Clinton camp gave it to Drudge first. The piece I linked to above said that Clinton's announcement was "rolled out in a showstopping media presentation that began with a detailed and accurate leak to the Drudge Report posted early Sunday afternoon" -- an account the Clinton camp has to my knowledge not disputed. But I can't promise up and down that other media didn't also get the info at roughly the same time, so I've corrected the above accordingly...
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