Drudge Report

Eric Kallgren    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 12:00pm on Thursday, May 28th, 2009

In an excellent opinion piece in the Miami Herald on May 26, 2009, Edward Wasserman (a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University) talks about Matt Drudge:

"The end began in January 1998, when Matt Drudge broke the story on his blog that linked President Clinton amorously to a young White House intern. At least that's how his scoop is remembered, as a signature moment in the growing dominance of online news. Except that's not what happened. Drudge didn't break the intern story because he didn't have it. What he reported was that Newsweek magazine had the story but wouldn't publish it.

Evidently somebody at Newsweek was fed up with the magazine's reluctance and told Drudge. I think that was the first time a major story went public after being back-channeled from reporters at a mainstream news organization to an unaffiliated website.

What Drudge's scoop really exemplified was the declining ability of news managers to control their staffs' access to the public. Today, 11 years later, thanks to the Internet most every journalist here can reach independently an audience immeasurably greater than the star reporter on the biggest newspaper or top-rated newscast could a generation ago. Now the traditional news business is built, one way or another, on a promise of exclusivity: What we've got you won't get elsewhere. So the idea that a media company's biggest threat may come from its own newsroom is hard for news managers to swallow."

The full article:
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1066006.html

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:29pm on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Newser founder Michael Wolff really doesn't like Matt Drudge, and he wants you to know it. Writing at Newser on April 22, 2009:

"The New Republic, continuing the political world’s odd obsession with the Drudge Report, says its editor, Matt Drudge, has disappeared, or gone into seclusion like some latter-day Howard Hughes.

I do not think Drudge has disappeared. I think he is dead. Certainly the Drudge Report, which the New Republic claims gets “20 million hits per day” (a meaningless locution as old-fashioned as the Drudge Report itself) has been on automatic pilot for several years.

If he is not dead, he is definitely brain dead. There hasn’t been a breaking story on the site in months. Drudge, once one of the most vaunted gossips in the nation, clearly isn’t in the loop. Or he is just bored to death. He had been doing this for a decade. It is the same old Drudge Report, without improvement or variation."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:03pm on Saturday, March 28th, 2009

Is Matt Drudge's boy Andrew Breitbart leaving home?

On March 24, 2009, Gawker gushed:

"Andrew Breitbart has been Matt Drudge's little helper for more than a decade. But now he's all growed up, and Drudge is back on his own — or is he?

Breitbart is known as "the friendly half of the Drudge Report" for running the site while Drudge is sleeping or flying to Europe or dancing to Junior Vazquez. He took the reins of the site "almost every day," according to the Los Angeles Times, and—because, unlike his boss, he answers his IMs—has served as a vital contact for website and newspaper editors desperate for Drudge links and the resulting traffic.

But he's told people that he's no longer doing regular shifts at the Drudge Report, and hasn't been for nine months or so. Breitbart's been very busy lately launching his conservative blog Big Hollywood and generally fashioning himself into a hip right-wing pundit."

Jimmy L    

Posted at 9:55pm on Saturday, February 9th, 2008

Good site in terms of breaking news. Sister sites:
- Drudge Report Archives
- Drudge Tracker