Matt Drudge

Matt Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American Internet news personality who is frequently called a "cybergossip". He is best known as the proprietor of the popular U.S.-based Drudge Report website, which made national waves when it was the first to break the news of an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President Bill Clinton (the Monica Lewinsky scandal) in 1998.

Contents

1 Early years 2 Rise in stature 3 Persona and criticism 3.1 Personal Life 4 External links

Early years

Drudge was relatively unknown before he began his Report and made national headlines. He was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, DC, where he was reportedly a "loner" and a news junkie. He graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in 1984 ranked 325th out of a class of 350. He said, "The only good grades I got in school were for current events." At an early age, he worked delivering papers for the Washington Star and spent much time reading the paper.

For many years, Drudge took a number of odd jobs such as night counterman at a 7-Eleven convenience store, a Time-Life books phone salesman, and sales assistant at a New York City grocery store. In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles where he took up residence in a small Hollywood apartment. He took a job in the gift shop of CBS studios, eventually working his way up to manager. It is here that he was apparently privy to some inside gossip, part of the inspiration for founding the Drudge Report.

Rise in stature

He founded the Drudge Report around 1994 originally as an email-based weekly dispatch. He subsequently founded the website in 1997 to supplement the email report, and he eventually dropped the email reports to focus on the website. The site consists primarily of links to stories about politics, entertainment, and various current events, and to many popular columnists, although Drudge occasionally authors a column of his own. Drudge's reports were electronically syndicated by Wired News from November 1996 to May 1997. After that, AOL carried his reports until 1998. By June of 1997, Drudge's e-mail report had more than 50,000 subscribers.

Drudge's website gained in popularity in the late 1990s after a series of reports in which he beat the mainstream media by reporting first. Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, Drudge arguably made a name for himself when he broke the news that led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Today, his site receives millions of page views per day and continues to grow. In updating the site, he reportedly monitors multiple television news channels and a number of websites on several computers in his home office.

A story by Business 2.0 from April 2003 magazine estimated that Drudge's website pulled in $3,500 a day in advertising revenues. Combined with his radio show and subtracting his relatively minor server costs, the magazine estimated that Drudge pulled in $800,000 a year with his simple website. An article in The Miami Herald from September 2003 said Drudge estimated he earns $1.2 million a year from his website and radio show. During an April 30, 2004 appearance on C-SPAN, Drudge confirmed that he has broken the seven-figure mark.

For many years, Drudge was based out of his apartment in Hollywood. Today, Drudge maintains the website from his condominium in Miami, Florida. Drudge moved to Florida in part because that state has no income tax, and Drudge's enterprise was becoming increasingly profitable. [1] (http://www.radarmagazine.com/features/issue_02/drudge5.html)

Drudge hosts a weekly Sunday night talk radio show—"The only time anyone will let me on the air," he claims. The show, which he also styles the "Drudge Report", is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. Drudge hosted a short-lived Saturday night television show on the Fox News Channel starting in June 1998. The show ended abruptly in November 1999 when the two parties mutually agreed to part ways. Drudge had refused to go on air, charging Fox News with censorship when the network prevented him from showing photos of surgery on a fetus (not related to abortion, though Drudge is staunchly Pro-Life). Fox News charged him with breach of contract, but the two amicably parted ways. His contract was originally set to run through February 2001. [2] (http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,5621,00.html)

Drudge also wrote a book in 2000 titled Drudge Manifesto. (ISBN 0451201507)

Persona and criticism

Drudge frequently champions himself as an independent populist, free from the influences of corporations, advertisers, and editors.

He became friends with Ann Coulter during their investigation of Clinton.

When his site reached the one billion page view mark during 2002, Drudge summarized his activities in these broad terms: "In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news -- at least one day ahead... Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules." [3] (http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/11/12/20021112_180331.htm)

However, critics regard Drudge's contribution to journalism as questionable, saying that the only stories he actually breaks are completely conceived, researched, funded, and written by other reporters. A federal judge noted in a judgment on a libel lawsuit, which ended in Drudge's favor, that Drudge was not a "reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer". Drudge's most famous achievement, the breaking of the Monica Lewinsky story, offended editors because by publishing details of the story, Drudge essentially made an editorial decision that overrode Newsweek's (which was sitting on the story).

To many, Drudge's politics are considered to be unabashedly conservative, and he often selects as the lead story of his website articles that praise prominent conservatives or criticize prominent liberals; this has led some critics to call him a mouthpiece of the conservative establishment in the United States. However, Drudge has repeatedly attempted to distance himself from establishment conservatives, arguing that his politics more accurately reflect libertarianism. Drudge also shows a fondness for apolitical stories heavy on news drama (the path of an oncoming hurricane) or the tabloid-bizarre (the birth of an exceptionally heavy baby).

Drudge has been criticized as reckless or careless for publishing erroneous reports. The most famous was a libel lawsuit stemming from a 1997 report in which he said that incoming White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal beat his wife and was covering it up. Drudge retracted the story the next day, saying he was given bad information, but Blumenthal filed a $30 million libel lawsuit against Drudge. The libel suit was settled in 2001 when Blumenthal agreed to drop the charges if Drudge did not file counter-charges. The case lasted for about five years because the burden of proof was on Blumenthal to show that Drudge had printed the false report with actual malice (a precedent established in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan).

Drudge has been variously called "an idiot with a modem" by Keith Olbermann, "the country's reigning mischief-maker" by The New York Times and "the kind of bold, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling, information-oriented outsider we need far more of in this country," by Camille Paglia. [4] (http://archive.salon.com/col/pagl/1998/09/01pagl2.html)

On June 19, 2005 Drudge took a personal photograph from this site [5] (http://dragonballyee.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/billy_kissing.jpg) of a woman speaking to Bill Clinton and tinted it green and added grit in order to make it look like more sinister. He then moved the woman closer so as to make it appear that Bill Clinton was kissing a woman other than his wife.

Drudge's image: [6] (http://www.drudgereport.com/bc.jpg) Original image: [7] (http://dragonballyee.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/billy_kissing.jpg) Side-by-Side comparison: [8] (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/06/19.html#a3534)

Personal Life

There has been some speculation about Drudge's sexuality. In Jeannette Walls' 2000 book, "Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip" ISBN 0380978210, Drudge is portrayed as a practising homosexual. Prior to the book's publication, Drudge responded to the allegations on his website and elsewhere. Again in Blinded by the Right ISBN 1400047285, formerly closeted and conservative David Brock describes visiting gay bars with Drudge in Hollywood. Drudge denies being homosexual.

External links

• Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com)
• The Secrets of Drudge, Inc. (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,515492,00.html), by Geoff Keighley, Business 2.0, April 2003
• Linking news sites, Matt Drudge creates an Internet success (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/6652451.htm), by Richard Pachter, The Miami Herald, September 1, 2003
• Media Matters reports on Matt Drudge (http://mediamatters.org/archives/search.html?topic=Matt%20Drudge)
• Drudge Report RSS Feed (http://www.inic.biz)
• Biography from Speakers Platform (http://www.speaking.com/speakers/mattdrudge.html)
• Another biography (http://www.vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/bio-0002/MattDrudge.htm)
• Disinfopedia article on Matt Drudge (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Matt_Drudge)
• Today's latest news about Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report (http://100towatch.com/2008/matt-drudge-report.html)
• Miami New Times interview (http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2001-06-28/feature.html/5/index.html), June 28, 2001
• Matt Drudge's political donations (http://www.newsmeat.com/media_political_donations/Matt_Drudge.php)
• Conservative Corner (http://honestconservative.blogspot.com) - A popular blog which uses only Drudge Report content.
• Anyone With A Modem Can Report On The World (http://www.libertyroundtable.org/library/essay.drudge.html) Transcript of Matt Drudge's 1998 Address Before the National Press Club