It’s A Drudge Day in History
As far as breaking news goes, it is a Matt Drudge Internet and everybody else is just "developing...."
On this day in 1998, Matt Drudge @ The Drudge Report first broke the news that there was more to the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinsky story than passed through the lips of the then President.
The DrudgeReport headline that day went, NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN. BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT, and Hell followed after. In this one story, Matt
Drudge declared that the major media were no longer going to be the sole gatekeepers of what did and did not make the news. He was the first Goliath in what grew to be “An Army of Davids.”
Drudge had made a habit of getting out in front of the breaking news of the day before Monica, but this single story and his dogged follow-through put him into low Earth orbit among newsmakers. By 2006 old news hounds from the once dominent Washington Post were writing in their mid-list books that all of journalism was feeding at the DrudgeReport site many times daily to see just how badly they were being scooped.
Drudge’s association with the Internet began in the Stone Age before the Web with Usenet: “The original issues of the Drudge Report were part gossip and part opinion. They were distributed as an e-mail newsletter and posted to alt.showbiz.gossip Usenet forum where they were both loved and ridiculed. In 1996, the newsletter transitioned slowly from entertainment gossip to political gossip and moved from e-mail to the Web as its primary distribution mechanism.”
There’s a lot of theory and speculation about how and why new media is saying to mainstream media, “We will bury you,” but if there’s one individual that has dug the grave, and bought the wreath, and still makes MSM attend its own funeral daily, it is Matt Drudge. Wags have compared him over the years to Walter Winchell, but that’s a canard. Drudge is bigger than Winchell ever was. And more influential.
The DrudgeReport now boasts millions of page views a day and continues to grow. It has also made Drudge a modestly rich man, but it is clear that it is not money that motivates him. Rumors of buy-out offers in the stratosphere surface like bubbles in the La Brea tar pits, but Drudge just brushes them off. If there’s a number that would make him sell, he hasn’t heard it yet. And besides, if he sold out, what would he do with his time? Read the Web?
Matt Drudge is still the driving force behind the Drudge Report, and still crazy after all these years. Matt, take a short victory lap around the house, and then get back to work. Thanks for the memories and the Monicas.
Let’s not forget the credit due to the Republican Party, which made Matt Drudge perhaps its biggest media conduit.
Yes, but only because CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, the LA Times, CNN and MsNBC and about ten thousand other papers were busy sucking on the Democratic gas pipe.
You’re the first to say Drudge has surpassed Winchell … And you’re probably right.
I go to Drudge about five times a day. I used to feel like it was a guilty pleasure, but the truth is it’s still the best place for breaking news. (Sorry, Pajamas Media… you’re not bad but… I do like your original reports.)
“Let’s not forget the credit due to the Republican Party, which made Matt Drudge perhaps its biggest media conduit.”
As opposed to the conduit between the HR departments of the DNC and the television networks: Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, and most famously George Stephanopoulos, are all former Democrat staffers. And until this month, the chairman of the parent company of ABC was a former Democrat senator.
Well, you can spin it however you want, but Matt Drudge had absolutely no capability to get information prior to becoming a Republican conduit.
He also has had a remarkably high failure rate.
Which is another way of saying that he is frequently wrong.
Well you might think so, but you’d be wrong. At the time of those scoops there were other means and other sources available to Drudge that were by no means as obvious as some sort of personal conduit. Being smart about the technology also played a role in his being able to get information. It doesn’t always take a mole to be a mole.
I actually have personal knowledge of a number of Drudge’s foul-ups, including one story he simply lied about.
I also how stories are funneled to him. Remember that I know a great many Republicans.
Don’t forget that he began as a dumpster diver, attempting to get Hollywood gossip.
My only beef in the recent period, and why I have no longer frequented the report as I used to, is his denial of giving credit to blogs that have scooped him.
Well, you can spin it however you want, but Matt Drudge had absolutely no capability to get information prior to becoming a Republican conduit.
What utter crap Bill, do you really expect anyone to believe that in 1998 the Republicans thought that some guy from the internet was the best way to get the “big” stories out – to be their “conduit”?
Or are you admitting that in 1998, no-one from the MSM was willing to say anything bad about Cliton?
“He was the first Goliath in what grew to be “An Army of Davids.”
I would consider the MSM as the Goliath figure and MD as one of the early slingers of stones. I admit that I check his site often but there are a ton of links there that in my less than humble opinion do not qualify as “news” worthy of bothering to read.
FE:
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