I would guess that Fred Hiatt intervened. Is he in the right position to do so?

Maybe they only let Drudge rule when he posts really vapid, glib stuff hitting the Dems b/c it fits their preconceived notions. We all know from past history that many journalists are very lazy about processing and integrating new information (TPMers excepted!).

this post is really about the washington post, not about drudge. or that was the idea anyway

So the question is, what benefit does the media get by not covering this story?

The lack of coverage is an institutional decision by someone near the top of the WaPo. If the editors said to reporters/pundits to cover the story, they would do so. Instead they are clearly saying "Don't cover it."

Back when there was competition between big city dailies, that would have meant that their competition would have scooped them. The lack fo coverage strongly suggests that the WaPo, NYTimes and LATimes do not consider themselves in competitition for news stories, and that WaPo does not consider the Moonie Times to be significant competition.

But that still brings up the original question. How do they (think they) benefit as institutions by not carrying the story? Do they consider the Democrats and Obama a threat to their existence? Or have the nearly three decades that the Republicans ruled Washington and cut off acces to reporters and editors who reported stories they didn't like raise a group of "newspersons" who fear any effort to report good news about the Democrats?

I keep looking back at how Dan Rather was treated by CBS after the wingnuts got after him. All he had done was try to report a story that we all know was out there. It ended his career, with the connivance of CBS news managers. Brian Williams and Tim Russert would simply never have dared to try to cover Bush's National Guard fiasco, and Katie Couric the entertainer and incompetent news person was a big white flag thrown up by CBS news management saying "We'll never make the mistake of trying to report on a Republican again!"

I don't think it takes a conspiracy theorist to decide that the Republicans have whipped the news media like dogs every time they stepped out to actually report the news for so long that now the news organization managers cringe like the whipped curs they are at the mere hint someone might give them a story negative towards Republicans and suggest they should report it. And no one has gotten into news management after aggressively going after Republicans on corruption or their rampant political and economic idiocy.

Huffingtonpost is up in terms of Total Page Views but this is not a fair comparison since the Drudge domain typically has one page or maybe two on it while Huffingtonpost is a deep site with many pages to be viewed.

If you look compare the data based on Reach, then Drudge is clearly way ahead of Huffingtonpost.

Hi Lux

Please take a bigger look at the picture. The media is not in love with McCain, he is the candidate they HAVE to pitch, love him or not.

They are tools for the Corporatists, the media is. They are owned by corporatists. They may not love McCain, but he is all they have at this point. In fact, I suspect McCain will NOT be the nominee. They have a couple of months to remove him (health reasons, plane goes down, revolt of the GOP at the convention, something)
Then, the Corporate Media will swoon all over WHOEVER emerges. So CorpMedia does not love McCain, they are not doing this for the ratings, or even the money.

The Corporate Media dictates what we see and hear, and to a large degree HOW WE FEEL on these topics. They cannot give up that power, and they HAVE to use it to help their Corporatist Team. This is not about money and ratings, or like and dislikes. This is them CONTROLLING the screens, owning all the microphones, and not letting ANYONE ELSE show you the world. This is about their control, their power. The money and ratings are offshoots. Sideline ventures.

For 40-50 years, there were no alternatives. They bought up all the airwaves and silenced every other media and ended up buying most of the papers and mags. They spent that 40-50 years telling you that they are bringing you The World, and to trust them, and being the ONLY source. If they don't want to show it to you, it never happened.
Now, finally, something appears which can rival them, or at least provide a different window on the world that THEY don't control. (The internets)....but as you can see thay are moving quickly to control it, buy it, kill it.