[[ update: I wrote this post yesterday [Feb 23] and because I was working on two different computers—don’t ask—it got lost in the ether. So I’m reposting it today, February 24.

In the meantime, last night I spoke to a journalist friend. He, along with most people I know, thinks that Bill Keller sat on the story for too long and then was forced into publishing it because of TNR. But this pov might simply have become the conventional “wisdom” among media insiders. Maybe, maybe not.

This explanation still doesn’t address how the NYT managed to do something that reflected so badly on the newspaper and missed its target (by insinuating that there was a sex angle to the story) .

One other note: it is a reflection of the awesome speed of media “stories” that this particular one—which captivated everyone for 24 hours—-is no longer hot. Indeed, on Sunday morning—a mere four days after the storm it unleashed—it barely gets a mention on Memeorandum.]]

On Thursday morning, after seeing the hundreds of links on Memeorandum to the NYT vs. John McCain “story” (or, rather, pseudo-event), I wrote:

Who will get hurt more—John McCain or the New York Times?

I also made a prediction.

That’s easy: the NYT.***

A mere two days later, we already know this to be a fact, and it is revealed by the New York Times itself:

McCain Gathers Support and Donations in Aftermath of Article in The Times

Senator John McCain declared the battle over on Friday morning, but by then his lieutenants believed he had already won the war.

Conservative radio talk show hosts who had long reviled Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate from Arizona, had rallied to his defense. Bloggers on the right said that this could be the start of a new relationship. Most telling, Mr. McCain’s campaign announced Friday afternoon that it had just recorded its single-best 24 hours in online fund-raising, although it declined to provide numbers.Both sides traced the senator’s sudden fortunes to an unusual source, The New York Times, …

Ed Morrissey comments on the NYT’s weaselishness in its follow-up—a valid point of media criticism:

the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story.

But Megan McArdle gets at something deeper: the reaction of “the Swing Voter” (as opposed to insiderish media and policy types, and I include a lot of bloggers in this category) [e.a.]:

The Swing Voter [McArdle’s mom] is completely outraged by the New York Times story–she vows to no longer take the Times, nay, not even for the Sunday crossword. She is also now thinking seriously about voting for McCain just to spite the New York Times.I found myself offering a tepid defense of what really is a pretty indefensible story: to wit, that reporters in cases like this usually know more they can tell, because so many sources refuse to go on the record. The Swing Voter was unmoved. She feels like the Times, and the sort of people who staff the Times, feel that they are entitled to manipulate the election in order to get teh “right” results–that such a story would never have run about a Democrat.

I detect some anxiety from certain quarters, if one of the comments on Matthew Yglesias’s blog is any indication:

Have you read McMegan lately about the whole McCain thing? A few of her regular commenters have gone off the deep end on this. They are saying(along with McMegan’s mother as she points out) that they will vote for McCain just to spite the NYT. Teh Stoopid. It burns!!!

update: Confirmation of the “silver lining of the John McCain lobbyist scandal” … for John McCain .

’m forced to conclude that this backfired so badly on the Times—and seems to have worked to shield McCain from further inquiry—that it’s almost as if someone planned it.

Heckuva job, New York Times!

—————–

*** I first heard about the NYT’s hit job on John McCain on CNN, late Wednesday night after a long day. What I remember was Anderson Cooper characterizing the NYT’s story as long on innuendo and short on substance.

But we begin with the story that is already triggering an uproar. And it’s only been out there a couple hours. We’re reporting it precisely because of what people are saying about it and because of where it came out. It’s running in tomorrow’s “New York Times.”

The story chronicles the alleged concerns of some McCain aides on his 2000 campaign, eight years ago, about a number of potential vulnerabilities, specifically their fears about Senator McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist. …

And we would quickly add that the article gives no direct evidence of it one way or another. In other words, it’s a lot of innuendo.

This was an unusually sharp comment from AC, who is a very self-disciplined on-air personality. It made me pay attention to a story I would usually disregard (a front-page smear of some politician from the NYT? who cares? that’s business as usual for my hometown paper).