The Drudge Retort

Back when most people we’re still figuring out how to connect their 14.4 kbps modems to AOL, Matt Drudge arrived on the Internet and became the ‘Net’s first household-name journalist, much to the chagrin of every journalist dining in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons whose last name wasn’t Ailes. Drudge got to the ‘Net first, established a mighty beachhead, and was the source of breaking news (and a fair amount of gossip) before the Blogosphere began.

Drudge of course is famously prickly when called a blogger. And while it’s fair to say that Drudge himself is not a blogger based on his site’s format, in the past he’s a bit more open-minded about those who followed in his wake, telling an interviewer in 2005:

They tried calling it