Like a good tabloid photo editor, Matt Drudge has a way of sniffing out the best part of a story, turning a rather mundane news report into a pull-quoted breaking bulletin that rockets around the press corps in minutes. That's one reason WaPo's Chris Cillizza gives for the influence of The Drudge Report. The second explanation? That everybody in the media is reading him, which gives Drudge one of the most influential, some might say "elite," readerships around.

But none of that explains the real reason why Drudge exerts so much influence in what's considered news.

The No. 1 reason a Drudge headline becomes everybody's A1 story?

Because we're lazy.

It's very easy to just check Drudge to see what's news — with the understanding that everyone else is doing the same thing. So in order to compete with the news agenda of the competition, everybody looks to Drudge to see what stories will be bouncing around the cable news networks, radio programs, and blogs over the next 24 hours while the newspapers who didn't report the story play catch up.

Ever since Drudge became the homepage of the press corps following the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the media has operated with his website as a bullet pointed Cliff's Notes to the news cycle.

Cillizza interviews a dozen "Drudge-ologists," or self-professed followers who consider themselves experts in the Drudge phenomenon. It just so happens that the people he likely spoke with are the same people — reporters, editors, politicos — who would rely on Drudge to set the political news agenda, turning his headlines into their own talking points.

So, yes, Drudge is quite skilled at pulling out a minor details from a news story and giving it broader significance, but if we didn't allow him to tell us what's news, then he couldn't.