{"id":8899,"date":"2006-10-28T11:50:20","date_gmt":"2006-10-28T15:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8899.html"},"modified":"2006-10-28T11:50:20","modified_gmt":"2006-10-28T15:50:20","slug":"allen-learns-how-to-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/allen-learns-how-to-leak\/","title":{"rendered":"Allen learns how to leak"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post ran a front-page piece<\/a> today on the Virginia Senate race, and Sen. George Allen’s (R-Va.) new cudgel against Jim Webb (D) — some racy text from Webb’s fictional novels written many years ago. We talked yesterday<\/a> about the merit of the charge, but there was a small tidbit in the WaPo piece that jumped out at me.<\/p>\n

Allen campaign officials provided excerpts from the books — some of them depicting acts of incest and graphic sexuality — to the Drudge Report Web site Thursday night. Matt Drudge’s Internet blog often breaks or promotes stories with sensational angles, most recently the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Allen’s aides, who have been trying to get other news organizations to write about the excerpts for weeks, issued statements saying the fictional scenes in Webb’s novels reflect poorly on Webb’s character and fitness for office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, real reporters didn’t care that Webb’s novels included sexual content. The Allen campaign kept pitching the story, but journalists kept blowing it off. Who cares about a few paragraphs from a 20-year-old novel, especially a novel embraced by conservative Republicans?<\/p>\n

Left with no other avenues, Allen’s team turned to Drudge, who apparently didn’t hesitate. The online world reacted to Drudge, the political world reacted to the online world, and the mainstream media responded in turn. Now, it’s on the front page.<\/p>\n

I don’t have an overarching point here, but I think it’s an interesting case study on how to use the web politically. It’s also a twist on how to use Drudge.<\/p>\n

During the Clinton impeachment saga, reporters would have some juicy-but-dubious tidbit that they wanted to report on, but it didn’t meet any journalistic standards. So, the reporters would give it to Drudge, it would cause a stir, and the same reporters would then write stories saying, “Look at the latest rumors buzzing online.”<\/p>\n

The Allen campaign has learned the game. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post ran a front-page piece today on the Virginia Senate race, and Sen. George Allen’s (R-Va.) new cudgel against Jim Webb (D) — some racy text from Webb’s fictional novels written many years ago. We talked yesterday about the merit of the charge, but there was a small tidbit in the WaPo piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}