What do Glenn Reynolds, Chris Bowers, Greg Tinti, Richard Bennett, Andrew Sullivan and I all have in common? As Conn Carroll has pointed out, in the past 24 hours, we’ve all linked to an early October New York article as if it was just out. (Though, to be fair, I’m the only one who explicitly said it was the latest edition.)
So what happened here? Let’s turn to Technorati.
The common link in all of our posts was to the fifth page of the article, and Sullivan was clearly first. As my post from yesterday should indicate, I found it on his site. I assume the others did as well, a possible exception being Bowers (being the lone netrooter in the group, and the only one not to mention Obama’s swipe at Daily Kos). How did Sullivan find it? Most likely from one of his ubiquitous e-mail tipsters.
And just to be sure, the story is indeed from October. It’s dated the 2nd of that month, and the last sentence of the article’s first page notes that Obama’s new book “will be hitting bookstores in mid-October.”
Searching for links to the article’s first page at Technorati, it appears the article was largely overlooked. The only well-known site to link at the time was Bloggingheads. That week’s ‘heads, Eric Alterman and Mickey Kaus, barely mentioned it, and none of them singled out the Kos reference.
So why did it escape unmentioned until now? That I cannot answer. This episode might put the lie to the notion that political bloggers will turn up every last relevant tidbit from the news. Or at least that they’ll do so immediately — eventually, it did make the rounds. And, of course, it’s probably of interest only to those of us who spend much of our time in the political blogosphere to begin with. Compare: a few days after the original Lee Bandy report, Joe Biden’s latest “Trent Lott” moment is generating bipartisan outrage — albeit limited, so far.
Back to New York and Obama, credit goes to Central Sanity, who linked the story yesterday for different reasons, and led with:
This article from New York Magazine is apparently about two months old, but it’s still a worthwhile look into the mind of the U.S. Senator from Illinois.
It may be a blogosphere cliché, but it’s still good advice — read the whole thing.
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