In a corner of Hollywood, a man sits in his apartment. He types away at his 486 computer, comforted by his six-toed cat. Another man, a powerful one, arguably the most powerful on earth finishes the night’s adulterous affair. Although that night the powerful man made a crucial mistake: he ejaculates on the woman’s dress. The love affair the man had would be one surrounded by mystery and massive public intrigue. One that may have remained hidden if it weren’t for the first man and an internet connection.
Armed with a laptop and an insider within Newsweek, Matt Drudge broke the story of the decade that editors deemed unfit for print. “Newsweek Kills Story on White House Intern: 23-Year-Old, Sex Relationship with President” screamed the front page of the website (BBC). After the leak, Newsweek’s editor’s has no other option but to publish the previously withheld story. The ensuing scandal and impeachment trial paralyzed Bill Clinton’s presidency. And it might not have happened if news media elites had their way in spiking the story. Drudge’s scoop that day in 1998 marked a shift in power and meaning that was once monopolized by corporate newspapers. Matt Drudge started a new era of journalism in which his website would make an immense impact on the coming decades media cycles and narratives.
Drudge is arguably the most influential person in media. When Drudge breaks a story power brokers do not take it lightly. Fox News host and former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that she would brief President Bush on developments on the Drudge Report and that she personally is an “addict” (Matt). Wikileak email dumps of U.S. State Department conversations revealed that they would keep tabs on the website. Mark Halperin, a media analyst and pundit on MSNBC, Tweeted on election day, “Spending your day manually refreshing Drudge Report is very 1990s. & what all Hollywood agents, Wall Streeters, Hill staff will do today” (Halperin). And a senior advisor to President Barack Obama said on TV that, “if you’re an undersecretary at the Energy Department and you’re doing an interview and you say one thing, you can end up on the front page of Drudge” (Michael). The broad influence Dudge has has was captured in the book The Way to Win, author John Harris writes, “In the fragmented, remote-control, click-on-this, did you hear? Political media world in which we live, revered Uncle Walter has been replaced by odd nephew Matt.” Harris continues, “Matt Drudge rules our world. With the exception of the Associated Press, there is no outlet other than the Drudge Report whose dispatches instantly can command the attention and energies of the most established newspapers and television newscasts” (Harris).
A Wikileaks email dump revealed that the State Department would keep tabs on what was “playing on drudge.”
Drudge is often cited as being a right-wing conservative. Many have speculated that Donald Trump would not have won the presidency if Drudge did not post favorable content. Drudge also has been a springboard for many conservatives. Before Breitbart.com, Andrew Breitbart told Reason Magazine that he was “Drudge’s bitch” working as a daytime editor for the site (Reason).
In 2016 the Drudge Report, according to the Washington Post, was the second most visited news website in the United States. It had at the time, more views than The New York Times and The Washington Post websites combined. Drudge’s popularity is not because of the stories he writes, but instead because of the meaning he derives from an aggregate of all stories covered by thousands of outlets. Drudge is the sole owner of his news website. His revenue comes from a banner advertisement which is estimated to bring in three million dollars a year (CNN).
Screengrab from web.archive.org
Drudge is often referred to as “assignment editor” for journalists. The referral traffic that comes from a link on the website is a major source of income for many sites. For instance, The Associated Press receives 37 percent of its referral traffic from the site. This had led many speculations that reporters will write stories that fit Drudge’s current narrative in order to get featured on the site. Politico quoted Mitt Romney’s campaign press secretary, Kevin Madden, saying, “[Matt] serves as an assignment editor for the national press corps. If he has a story up, you know the cable networks are going to cover it all day” (Politico).
The ranking of referral traffic according to Vertiz which tracks online user analytics.
Type in Drudgereport.com on a browser and the first thing that appears is a center photo and rows of black links. Reminiscent of a paper in a newsstand, the website has had the same format since the late 90’s. Visitors come to the site to get Drudge’s take on the news. The links are often augmented with creative headlines boiling down the important takeaways. The website is updated multiple times a day, sometimes hundreds, and has garnered a reputation as the first to expose up and coming trends to the public.
The Drudge Report was started by Matt Drudge as an email subscription in 1996 (Drudge 3). Its focus was on celebrity gossip scoops. As subscriptions to his email grew, Drudge launched drudgereport.com. His connections in Hollywood allowed him to curate celebrity news from an insider perspective. He had a reputation for publishing the stories other outlets would not. He admitted that he would dig through trash cans to find Nilsen Ratings, allowing him to be the first to report to the public (Michael).
Other than online, Drudge has expressed himself on different mediums including talk radio, book publishing and a short stint at Fox News. But through it, all Drudge’s website has remained a mainstay. Drudge left Fox News in 1999 after the vice president refused to let Drudge air a photo which made a misleading connection between it and abortion (Vaughn). The dispute was captured in a Washington Post article: “In some ways the clash may have been inevitable, pitting a 31-year-old iconoclast who plies his trade on the freewheeling Net against a network that, while it takes more chances than its rivals, tries to uphold a set of news standards” (Washington).
Matt Drudge likes to remain an elusive figure. Although he runs a news website with millions of visits a day, he has made very few public appearances. In 1998 Matt Drudge appeared at the National Press Club and summed up his website and its success:
From a little corner of my Hollywood apartment with nothing more than my 486 computer and my 6 toed cat. I have been able to consistently break big stories. The Drudge Report first to name the VP candidate on the Republican ticket last election. First to announce, to an American audience, that Princess Diana had tragically died. First to tell the sad, sad story of Kathleen Willey. First, every weekend with box office results that even studio executives admit they get from me. A new cable network is forming. I was first to report the unholy alliance between Microsoft and NBC. I have written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles. My readers can follow earthquakes, weather patterns, read Frank Rich on Saturday, Marine Dowe on Sunday from my site link to Bob Novack on Monday. Track the world news wires minute to minute. And this is something new. This marks the first time that an individual had access to the news wires outside of a newsroom. You get to read all the news from the AP, UPI, Reuters, French Press. Before, only newsrooms had access to the full pictures of the day’s events. But now any citizen does. We get to see the kinds of cuts that are made for all kinds of reasons. Endless layers of editors, with endless agendas changing bits and pieces. So by the time the Newspaper hits your welcome mat, it had no meaning (Michael).
\
Drudge Report remains high but slipped in the Similar Web ranking since the end of the election.
Personally, I have checked the Drudge Report religiously for years. I have found the mobile app he has to be fast in loading skimmed versions of linked articles. My consumption of The Drudge Report has enabled me to identify trends and effectively understand the world around me. Today’s major media companies have hundreds of editors changing the wording and placement of stories to create their own narrative to reflect their biases and elitist world view. Drudge is a return to the sacred relationship between a staff reporter and the common man. Not, the common man to corporate managed home pages such as CNN. Especially in today’s social media dominated culture, having Matt Drudge lead me through the noise and rubbish that populate Facebook feeds is a personal sanity buffer.
There are no longer any non-partisan news services. Therefore, I often supplement my New York Time’s consumption with a reality check from Drudge. In recent years, news services have blurred the distinction between opinion and news. That has forced me to broaden my consumption to dozens of news sources. If I believe Drudge to be inaccurate in his story aggregation biases I can click a link to either the AP Newswire, Huffington Post, Washington Post or any of the remaining 200 news websites linked directly on his page.
After this assignment, I have realized how invaluable Matt Drudge has been to me as an informed citizen. I would not have the same worldview had I been boxed in with only the legacy news outlets such as The New York Times. In conducting research for this assignment I have become evermore grateful for the pressure Drudge has put on news services to publish stories that might have otherwise been spiked for political reasons.
Phil Graham once said that, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.” Matt Drudge’s journalism has surely changed the course of history. His narratives have changed public perceptions of politicians and institutions. Drudge Report readers have included Presidents and media elites who check to see where the news spin cycle will go next. They also include everyday people and for the first time ever, anyone can get an honest and complete picture of the day’s events, free from the manipulation of powerful spin artists.Works Cited
DrudgeReportArchives.com © 2017, www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/01/17/20020117_175502_ml.htm.
The Washington Post, WP Company, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/15/021r-111599-idx.html.
Wayback Machine, web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.drudgereport.com.
“Clinton Scandal | Scandalous Scoop Breaks Online.” BBC News, BBC, 25 Jan. 1998, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/clinton_scandal/50031.stm.
Drudge, Matt, and Julia Phillips. Drudge Manifesto. New American Library, 2000.
Halperin, Mark. “Spending Your Day Manually Refreshing Drudge Report Is Very 1990s. & What All Hollywood Agents, Wall Streeters, Hill Staff Will Do Today.” Twitter, Twitter, 8 Nov. 2016, twitter.com/MarkHalperin/status/795983272979419136.
“Matt Drudge Gives Rare Radio Interview.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 30 June 2014, insider.foxnews.com/2014/06/30/matt-drudge-gives-rare-radio-interview.
MichaelSavage4Prez. “FOXNEWS: Is DRUDGE REPORT on White House Enemies List? 4/4/13 – The Five.” YouTube, YouTube, 4 Apr. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ItS—uzw.
MichaelSavage4Prez. “Matt Drudge Creator of Drudge Report Full Press Conference – (1998).” YouTube, YouTube, 4 May 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcA75f9_ik&t=411s.
“The Secrets of Drudge Inc. How to Set up a Round-the-Clock News Site on a Shoestring, Bring in $3,500 a Day, and Still Have Time to Lounge on the Beach.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, 1 Apr. 2003, money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2003/04/01/339822/.
Vaughn, Stephen. Encyclopedia of American Journalism. Routledge, 2009.
Harris, John, and Mark Halperin. The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. Random House, 2006.
2010 Complete Election Coverage: Drudge keeps campaigns guessing
Drudge keeps campaigns guessing – Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith – POLITICO.com