"Mickey Kaus concisely summarizes the state of the evidence in "Non-fake but inaccurate." Kaus writes (italics and bolding deleted):

WaPo's Mike Allen reports that the now-famous Schiavo "talking points" memo came from freshman GOP senator Mel Martinez's office. So that mystery is cleared up. The memo wasn't a fake. But Allen doesn't come off looking too good in this latest account. a) The memo was apparently not "distributed to Republican Senators by party leaders," as Allen's initial story, sent out through the Post news service to other papers, reported. It was--at least judging from today's account--handed to one Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, by one freshman Republican senator (who isn't in the party leadership); b) Allen doesn't explain why he told Howie Kurtz he "did not call them talking points or a Republican memo" when he had in fact done just that in the news service draft; c) Even the later, more "carefully worded" account Allen published in the Post itself was apparently wrong. Allen wrote
In a memo distributed only to Republican senators, the Schiavo case was characterized as "a great political issue"...
This is almost the reverse of what Allen now reports. We know the memo was distributed to at least one Democratic senator. We don't know whether it was distributed to any Republican senator other th[a]n the senator whose staffer wrote it (although it's hard to believe it wasn't given to at least some other GOP lawmakers)..."
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_04.php#010095

In others words the story as it was orginally told was essentially false. The true account wasn't anything of any news value, the part of what was interesting enough to make it newsworthy was fabricated.
So it's just one more example biased, lazy, and/or poor reporting.
The aide was allowed to resign, some people think he shouldn't have been allowed to this and instead should been fired. I think the reporter [Allen] who broke this story should also be fired- assuming you want to get accurate news stories.