The News Aggregators

Both sites are similar in that they are very simply laid out, and have many links everywhere that you can click. I noticed on the Huffington Post that there are clearly labeled blogs with headlines as many of the links, whereas the Drudge Report has mostly links to other news sites, and none of the headlines are actually blogs. I think the Drudge Report is less cluttered and easier to navigate.

The Huffington Reports top headlines seem to focus more on government related issues such as presidential candidates and government decisions. The Drudge Report, however, seems more balanced in that it is not all political headlines. My immediate impression is that the Drudge Report is much more balanced like a mainstream news site such as cnn, because their top headlines range from the murder-suicide at UW, to a dry spell in Los Angeles, and a story about Anna Nicole Smith.

As for political affiliation or bias, I cannot really see any obvious signs of bias, however if I had to choose one I would say they both lean slightly left, but I only say that based off of a couple of the current headlines, although I could very likely be wrong since I don't know that much about politics. I basically could not find any hard evidence to choose one.

On the Drudge Report, the headlines for most of the stories match the actual story, except that some of the headlines have been changed on the Druge Report website. The Huffington Report was similar in that the headlines were what the stories were actually about, but slightly changed.

I don't know if these sites have the power to influence the public, because I personally don't know anybody that reads them. However, if their readership is as high as some people claim, I suppose it is possible.