Malone’s take on Drudge’s effect on the old media is basically positive, but he can’t resist the urge to get a little dig in at Drudge – even if he has to ignore the facts to make his point. Malone says:

But that's when Drudge stepped in. For no obvious reason, he decided to link to the two day old AP story. He then attached one of his classic scare headlines: "Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession." Personally, I love stuff like that - it harkens back to the good old days of newspapering and the vastly underrated age of yellow journalism - and if the viewer chose to read the term 'imminent' into Drudge's words, and then link through to the AP story . . .well, bully for Matt.

The only problem here is that there were no “Drudge’s words,” and “his classic scare headline” was actually just the actual AP headline attached to their story.

Malone must have missed Pethokoukis pointing out as much in the very first paragraph of the entry that Malone is himself following up on:

But despite the inflammatory Drudge headline– which, in all fairness, linked to an Associated Press story with that same title – the Maestro was hardly so definitive as Drudge made him out to be.

Of course Pethokoukis managed to contradict himself within the space of that one sentence, first acknowledging that Drudge’s “inflammatory” headline was just the AP headline, but then talking about what Drudge had “made out” Greenspan to be.

The old media just can’t quite resist taking (or manufacturing) every opportunity to remind us that no matter how much more popular and influential Drudge et al may be than the MSM these days, the new media are all really just yellow journalists. The MSM is finally admitting that they’re losing the readership/viewership battle. But they can’t stop clinging to the comforting notion that unlike Drudge, they’re just to smart and fair for us troglodytes to appreciate.

Added at 3:03 EST: Malone 's timeline is a little faulty as well. Drudge didn't "for no obvious reason" decide to link to "a two day old AP story." His first link to the story seems to have been made at 17:52 GMT on Monday the 27th. The AP story seems to have first appeared at 13:34 GMT that same day. That's a four-hour lag, not a two day one.