The Times (of Lon­don) should have found itself gen­er­at­ing big web traffic thanks to its print edi­tion mak­ing the front page of Drudge.

So how did it (nearly) hap­pen? With a little help from unfoun­ded alleg­a­tions of a les­bian affair involving Hil­lary Clin­ton and an aide.

Last week the Drudge Report ori­gin­ally linked to this Times story from 22 Novem­ber, which detailed some of the smears being lev­elled at vari­ous pres­id­en­tial candidates.

The piece began:

The anonym­ous e-mails and let­ters began drop­ping into inboxes and through front doors this summer.

One claimed that Hil­lary Clin­ton was hav­ing a les­bian affair with Huma Abedin, her beau­ti­ful aide. Another online mass-mailing cau­tioned of the “dark secrets” of Mitt Romney’s Mor­mon­ism. A blog­ger claim­ing to sup­port John McCain said that Rudy Giuliani’s wife sup­por­ted the killing of “inno­cent pup­pies”. Fly­ers appeared on cars accus­ing Barack Obama of being a Muslim extrem­ist. An anonym­ous web­site said that Fred Thompson was a cor­rupt playboy.

Wel­come to South Car­o­lina, the foulest swamp of elect­oral dirty tricks in Amer­ica. This state’s primary race has already become the sleaz­i­est leg of the 2008 pres­id­en­tial campaign.

The Drudge link gen­er­ated some mod­est traffic. So far, so straight­for­ward. But then Drudge got hold of the paper itself.

That main photo (of Clin­ton walk­ing with aide Huma Abedin) is cap­tioned: “Hil­lary Clin­ton has been accused of hav­ing an affair with Huma Abedin.” And, on the strength of that cap­tion, the story made Drudge’s main page.

DON’T GO THERE: BRIT PAPER STARTS ‘UGLIEST MONTH’
Sun Nov 25 2007 20:45:12 ET

The TIMES of Lon­don starts ‘The Ugli­est Month’ with a full page photo takeout on Hil­lary Clin­ton and her beau­ti­ful per­sonal assistant.

“Hil­lary Clin­ton has been accused of hav­ing an affair with Huma Abedin,” reads the caption.

The splash stunned Brit­ish read­ers and angered cam­paign insiders.

“This does not even qual­ify as tabloid trash… it’s ridicu­lous and reck­less,” a Hil­lary con­fid­ante explained over the weekend.

Tak­ing the whis­per from the under­ground to the over­ground, the paper made no claims to know­ing any truth of the rela­tion­ship between Hil­lary and Huma…

But Drudge didn’t link to the ori­ginal online story that puts the cap­tion into con­text. So, no extra traffic for the Times.

Is this a little disin­genu­ity by the US site? Or a case of not look­ing back to see that — cap­tion aside — this is in fact the same story you already linked to?

Still leav­ing polit­ics to one side — with David Mont­gomery diss­ing sub-editors, what bet­ter illus­tra­tion of their abil­ity to sell stor­ies than this?

And finally, a print edi­tion that could have driven online traffic (well, almost).