Matt Drudge

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Matt Drudge from Premiere Radio Networks

Matthew Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American Internet journalist and a talk radio host. He is best known as the proprietor of the Drudge Report website, which made national waves when it was the first to break the news of a relationship between a White House intern and President Bill Clinton (the Monica Lewinsky scandal) in 1998.

1 Early years
2 Rise in stature
3 Persona and criticism
4 References or notes
5 External links
- 5.1 Positive
- 5.2 Criticism

[edit] 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. Drudge comes from a nonreligious Jewish family with what he calls very "liberal hippie" parents. Always chafing at required education of any kind, Matt couldn’t master enough Hebrew to have his bar mitzvah – even after four, six or seven painful years in Jewish education (depending on the press interview).

He graduated from Northwood High School in 1984, 325th out of a class of 350^[1]. He said, "The only good grades I got in school were for current events."

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, McDonald's manager, 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. 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.

[edit] Rise in stature

The Drudge Report website

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 gained notoriety when he was the first outlet to break the news which later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.^[2] 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 magazine from April 2003 estimated that Drudge's website received $3,500 a day in advertising revenues. Subtracting his relatively minor server costs, the magazine estimated that The Drudge Report website grossed $800,000 a year. ^[3] 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 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 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.^[4]

Drudge also wrote a book in 2000 titled Drudge Manifesto. (ISBN 0-451-20150-7)

Matt Drudge has also guest hosted for the conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Drudge gained radio notoriety in the early 2000s by becoming a constant reference for news material on Limbaugh's radio show. Drudge is also acknowledged by conservative Michael Savage as a major information source of talking points for The Savage Nation.

Drudge is credited with being the man most responsible for the failure of John Kerry's 2004 Presidential bid. In their 2006 book The Way To Win, Mark Halperin and John Harris wrote:

"Drudge, with his droll Dickensian name, was not the only media or political agent whose actions led to John Kerry's defeat. But his role placed him at the center of the game -- a New Media World Order in which Drudge was the most potent player in the process and a personifications of the dynamic that did Kerry in."^[5]

In 2006, TIME Magazine named Drudge one of the 100 most influential people in the world^[6], and ABC News concluded that the Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage.^[7] In October, 2006, Washington Post editor Len Downie, speaking at the Online News Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C., stated "Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."^[8]

[edit] Persona and criticism

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Called “the Walter Cronkite of his era” by Halperin and Harris ^[5], Drudge frequently champions himself as an independent populist, free from the influences of corporations, advertisers and editors.

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."^[9]

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^{[citation needed]}."

In 2001, Drudge told the Miami New Times that:

...I am a conservative. I'm very much pro-life. If you go down the list of what makes up a conservative, I'm there almost all the way.^[10].

However, Drudge has repeatedly attempted to distance himself from establishment conservatives, arguing that his politics more accurately reflect libertarianism^[11] In a 2005 interview with The Sunday Times Drudge described his politics:

I’m not a right-wing Republican,” he replies without batting an eye. “I’m a conservative and want to pay less taxes. And I did vote Republican at the last election. But I’m more of a populist.^[12].

The libertarian Individual Rights Foundation paid for his attorney's fees in the Blumenthall lawsuit. Nonetheless, a UCLA political scientist published a study of media bias in December 2004^[13] which found -- based on a comparison of articles linked to by Drudge with Congressional voting records -- that the Drudge Report leans "left of center, compared to the average American voter", which the researcher ascribed to the study's design, based as it is on links to other news sources, rather than the handful of news stories written by Drudge himself.^[14] Drudge 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), or, curiously, events in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Another topic of interest has been Drudge's repeated publishing of personal attacks, suggestions, and private information, such as the Monica Lewinsky and Sidney Blumenthal reports.

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. Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit after agreeing to a settlement which required Blumenthal to pay cash to Drudge's attorneys.^[15]

"This frivolous lawsuit, which was approved by a sitting president and vice president of the United States, comes to its wimpy conclusion with Mr. Blumenthal, I repeat, Mr. Blumenthal cutting a check," Drudge said at the time. "In return, I pay him nothing, and have agreed not to countersue."

Drudge has been variously called "an idiot with a modem" by Keith Olbermann^[16], "the country's reigning mischief-maker" by The New York Times ^[17] and "the kind of bold, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling, information-oriented outsider we need far more of in this country," by Camille Paglia.^[18]

In August 2005, Drudge reported that Small Business Computing showed "rising star" Soledad O'Brien pictured with Drudge Report on her computer screen.^[19] However, Drudge has since drawn criticism for posting this, as he failed to note that the photo was eight years old when he posted it, and that although Drudge referred to O'Brien as a "CNN Anchor," she was not working for CNN at the time the photo was taken.