Newspaper endorsements, some political strategists will tell you, mean everything. Others will scoff and contend they mean nothing at all. Regardless of one's feelings, it is hard not to notice the trend of recent newspaper endorsements in the Democratic race: After winning a few primaries here and there, Barack Obama has been scooping up editorial page nods left and right.

Over the weekend, that trend continued. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle and the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (incidentally, the paper that broke Dick Cheney's shooting accident) all wrote editorials backing Obama. In fact, going through some notes, it looks like it's been since February 1 since Clinton won an endorsement, that one from the Denver Post.

According to a quick count, Clinton has been endorsed by thirty-two editorial boards, including the Des Moines Register, the Las Vegas Sun, the Kansas City Star, the Orlando Sentinel, the Salt Lake Tribune and, of course, the New York Times. None of those papers represent states that voted after February 5. In fact, Clinton has no endorsements from newspapers circulating in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Wisconsin or Hawaii.

Obama, on the other hand, has backing from fifty-five editorial boards. Editorial boards that reach large numbers of readers include the Arizona Republic, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both major Chicago papers, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times.

From the eight states which have held nominating contests after February 5, Obama has won four endorsements, from the Journal Sentinel, both papers in Seattle, along with the alternative weekly The Stranger, and the Baltimore Sun. Obama already leads among post-February 19 papers: The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Austin American Statesman, the Dallas Morning News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as the Chronicle and the Caller-Times, have written endorsement editorials for the freshman Senator.

Papers that endorsed early could well have acted like many voters: They wondered whether Obama could get through a primary and were looking ahead to a general election, gauging electability as well as issues of character and experience. Once Obama started winning a few primaries, perhaps other ed boards decided he could win, so Clinton's electability advantage disappeared.

One major caveat -- much as we would like to, we don't read every paper in the country, so we could easily have missed a few endorsements. The counts above are approximately correct, and we count publishing groups as one editorial board. Still, whatever the reason for the recent dramatic shift toward Obama and the actual number of newspaper nods, the trend is clear: Post-February 5, the eleven papers that have endorsed have all chosen Obama.