Hillary, Obama and Anonymous Sources

"You're right that writing about Saddam's hanging before it happened was not my finest hour. It was one of those tricky journalistic challenges . . . The doomed dictator remains forever hooded in the headline. Hey, ho," he wrote.

Harnden said nothing about the paper's management, except to praise "my industrious online colleagues" for updating his story. Still, the Telegraph responded by taking down the posting and warning its staff. According to the Guardian, the Telegraph's Web editor wrote: "Please avoid blogging about your relationship with your employer, whether the Telegraph Media Group as an entity, 'the desk,' or 'my boss,' even in jest. Such comments are frequently misconstrued and can easily backfire. Think carefully before blogging about journalists' 'tricks of the trade.' "

Says Harnden: "The whole episode was pretty unfortunate. I think some lessons have been learned about the nature of blogging and its relationship to traditional reporting as we all try to grapple with the new online world."

Meanwhile, Clinton may have dominated the Sunday talk shows with the odd timing of her Saturday morning online announcement, as her campaign intended, but she missed all the newsmagazine covers and the weeknight newscasts, which have much bigger audiences than the Sunday chatfests. Bill Richardson grabbed part of the next news cycle by announcing yesterday on ABC's "This Week," with Sam Brownback's Saturday entry into the Republican presidential derby all but lost in the process. If this keeps up, even journalists may lose track of who's running -- or simply ignore all but a few favored candidates.

I'll have to get to Bill Richardson and Sam Brownback in the coming days. Even a cybercolumn can't run on forever.

Here's the memo by Hillary strategist Mark Penn on why she can win: "Hillary is the one potential nominee who has been fully tested, with the Republicans spending nearly $70 million in the last decade to try to defeat her."

The Chicago Tribune piece I quoted earlier also includes these thoughts:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton's bold splash into the presidential waters ensures that for the foreseeable future the race for her fellow Democrats and for Republicans will be about the Clintons--what she does, what he does--bringing with it all the brilliance, triumph, power, passion, drama and love-hate, place-called-Hope, didn't-inhale, flirt-with-disaster madness that defined the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency.

"But make no mistake: In this race, at this point, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is the sun. Everyone else, including Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, revolves around her."

USA Today doesn't swoon either:

"As New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton plunges into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, she faces resistance from fellow Democrats who don't like her, don't like her positions on issues or don't think she can win . . .

"Clinton is a complicated package. Her constituents and Senate colleagues generally view her as smart and hard-working. On the challenge side of the ledger, there's her personality (perceived in some quarters as chilly), her vote on Iraq (she supported the war) and her gender (are Americans ready for a female president?).