Feeding the news beast from a

chaotic crime scene has always

been rough going. Tuesday, a

host of Columbine High stories

appeared - and were retracted -

literally before the bodies were

cold. But the real struggle was

in the effort to take an instant

talking-head position, and in

that melee, the body count was

significantly higher than 15 (or

16). "It became increasingly

clear going into Day Two of the

Columbine High massacre that

news consumers could fill in

their own blanks," Matt Drudge

noted, in an effort to cover up

his own blank, outing the Trench

Coat Mafia through an online

Usenet posting. But Drudge's

mop-up crew on the cable news

channels wasn't doing much

better. Reports that one of the

many lyrics sites for the band