This backs up what Alexa shows, too. I’m sure part of it is ideology, as people become more and more disaffected by Republicanism and conservatism in the Bush era. Part of it, too, is likely the state of the presidential campaign, with all the news being on the Democratic side.

But I’m sure a lot of it also has to do with the fact that, disregarding politics for a moment, and perhaps putting it a bit simplistically, HuffPo is an interesting website and Drudge is a rather unremarkable webpage. You and I may know Drudge’s history with the Lewinsky scandal and know that the site is influential. But if you tell someone who hasn’t heard of it to check it out, they’re unlikely to bookmark that page for any reason other than to marvel at what web design looked like in 1994.

I used to be a Drudge junky because I knew how influential it was, but I came to realize that if a story were of any importance or legitimacy, I would see it elsewhere, on sites less likely to cause eye strain. News outlets aren’t letting Drudge define what’s a story anymore, either. They may say otherwise in an occasional and embarrassing puff piece, but those puff pieces are just an easy way to cultivate links from a rather ego-driven webmaster’s namesake.

By contrast, HuffPo is interesting not just because of its influence (which is increasing — every major media outlet wrote stories about HuffPo’s exclusive with Obama on race), but also because it is, in and of itself, simply more interesting. It has regular original reporting, for example, not just an occasional “The Drudge Report has learned…” tip. HuffPo has even discovered AJAX, comments, how to use the color palette in Photoshop, and lots of other features that have popped up on the Internet over the last decade or so. And the site’s multiple sections contribute to what its new tagline appropriately calls an “Internet Newspaper.”

I wouldn’t mind if some traditional newspapers’ webpages took tips from it.