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The front page of USA Today is a piece of journalistic real estate the White House cares about deeply. With more than 2.3 million readers each weekday, the paper has a reach well beyond the elite dailies of the Cambridge-Manhattan-Washington corridor. Which is why veteran USA Today reporter Larry McQuillan found himself on the phone with the White House for several hours last Thursday.

His front-page story that day was about the administration's penchant for secrecy, and he fingered President Bush's senior aide Karen Hughes as the White House's number-one control freak. To illustrate this, McQuillan pointed out a curious development: "White House officials who have been invited to the White House Correspondents' Association [WHCA] black-tie dinner in May say they are required to notify Hughes' office. If an official receives multiple invitations, which is common, she decides which one he or she can accept." As White House aides harangued McQuillan throughout the day, picking apart the piece line by line, another USA Today reporter got a message from an administration official: The Bush aide wouldn't be able to attend the Correspondents' dinner with the paper after all.