Earlier today Ron Fournier wrote an AP article stating:
Wesley Clark, seeking a bipartisan flavor for his presidential campaign, has hired a former adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain [John Weaver] to be his senior strategist.
As of 5:09pm, Fournier now writes:
Wesley Clark, seeking a bipartisan flavor for his presidential campaign, is in negotiations with a former adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain to be his senior strategist. The Clark campaign and John Weaver, who helped run McCain's insurgent 2000 primary campaign against President Bush in 2000, said Monday it is not a done deal. "John Weaver has not been hired by the Clark campaign although he has been in discussion with the campaign about the possibility of coming on to give us some strategic advice," said Matt Bennett, spokesman for the Clark campaign.
The above two links, were current as of 5:45pm EST. Before the modification, Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, and Amy Sullivan all hailed this as great news for Clark. We'll see if the deal gets closed. It's interesting to note that Sullivan links to Yahoo! carrying the AP story. When she set the link it almost assuredly had the original AP story announcing the hiring as a done deal. Since that time, the new AP story has appeared there without any indication by Yahoo! or the AP of a correction. I don't know what the journalistic implications of this are, but the blogging implications seem to be big. I think if one corrects an article on a central factual issue, that should be noted whenever the article has already appeared even if not in print.
UPDATE (6:03pm EST): Add Nick Confessore at TAPPED to the list of people who view (what he believes to be the definite hiring) as a major development. The WaPo still has the updated Fournier article reporting only on negotiations. Stay tuned....
UPDATE (7:05pm EST): Josh Marshall notes the change in the AP article. He says that it is not that Fournier got the story wrong, but rather there is in-fighting in the Clark camp over what Weaver's exact role would be. He points out that Fournier originally cited a "campaign official speaking on condition of anonymity" as his source. It's interesting, though, that in the updated article Fournier does not mention this tidbit. I would guess this is so as not to embarrass his source who might be helpful in the future ....and Amy Sullivan has an interesting theory as to the identity and motive of Fournier's original source.
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