A-List Bloggers' Coverage of Obama's 100th Day

Matt Drudge's The Druge Report, amid frantic links to stories about the swine flu and an ominous photo of a man suited in lab goggles, a face mask and full white protective bodysuit captioned "Level 5," pointed to a story from financial giant Bloomberg.com optimistically portraying Obama's first 100 days in office. The story, which plays off its headline that proclaims "Obama... says he is 'remaking America,'" focuses on Obama's plan to bail Chrysler out of bankruptcy and otherwise cut the budget deficit in half during his first term. The article also focuses on what Obama hopes to accomplish in his next 100 days. Most of the story's links were internal and comments were not enabled, making the Bloomberg story a triumphant and ultimately one-sided affair.

Other links on Drudge concerning Obama point to stories on the president's plan to fix the "economic wreckage" and the U.S.'s image as well as a story about Obama's decision that waterboarding, authorized by former President Bush, was torture. Drudge generally featured positive and progressive links concerning Obama's 100th day, although much more heavily covered issues surrounding the swine flu.

Colorado Springs local Michelle Malkin took a different approach - catching her readers' attention with a Photoshopped image of President Obama in a "Scare Force One" parody (at left). The image, which features a less-than-flattering image of Obama looking old, serious and somewhat threatening, is perhaps the most obviously opinionated A-list blog I saw. However, Malkin also seemed to be doing a good job at drawing in her audience through original pictorial arrangements as opposed to the generally positive, status quo slideshows featured elsewhere.

Malkin's coverage largely blames Obama's administration for "spending inordinate government resources - and recreating 9/11 havoc - to update Air Force One publicity shots." Malkin rants and Malkin raves, and Malkin also features some very negative and very Photoshopped images of Obama, one frighteningly reminiscent - with paintshop-style brush writing - of everyone's favorite celeb blogger Mr. Perez Hilton himself (see right).

The Huffington Post took a slightly more balanced approach, featuring a "report card" for President Obama's first 100 days from Huffington Post's top bloggers and major players. Though generally positive, the short blurbs cover a number of topics - from the economy to climate change to reproductive rights - and feature links directly to each blogger's post of their own impressions.

The HuffPost also featured the vapid "Michelle Obama's First 100 Days of Style: Vote for her Best and Worst Outfits," which included a slideshow and poll, as well as an interesting article titled "Obama's First 100 Days: 10 Achievements You Didn't Know About," including the fact that President Obama has appropriated $19 billion in the stimulus package to help implement an electronic medical record system. Overall, quite a smattering of coverage - for just about any Obama-supporter or fashion queen.

Ultimately? The blogs covered the issue based on their own pre-existing political slant, most featuring slideshows of Obama going about his first 100 days of business. The rare few who spoke out against Obama in an unapologetic way - like Michelle Malkin - caught some attention, but the big hitters that featured more than one perspective and quite a few external links (as Shirky discussed), like the already enormously popular HuffPost - which captured 1092 comments on its "Obama report card" story alone - inevitably stole the show.

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