This is a teenie little Drudge geek thing, but Drudge is once again way ahead of the pack. It’s already DRUDGE REPORT 2005® in his HTML page title. Been that way for a few days. Happy new year!

I just wanted to make a shameless plug for my site, Drudge Forum. If you haven’t visited the site yet, it’s the place to discuss the day’s Drudge Report headlines, all things Drudge, as well as hot politics and lots of other stuff. The site has been growing steadily with new members and I’ve made lots of changes recently, so even if you’ve visited before it’s worthwhile to take a look again. www.drudgeforum.com

OK, now back to our regularly scheduled posting…

I think one of the reasons we find the Drudge Report entertaining is that it’s serving as a news aggregator for us. The problem with just looking at CNN.com for news, for example, is that you just get their stories and their view. However, if you just had a news aggregator compiling news from multiple sources automatically, it still wouldn’t be as entertaining as Drudge. Google News is like this - lots of information from many sources compiled without human intervention. Informative but not very interesting. But Matt Drudge constantly seeks out news from multiple sources with many different edtiors and styles. And you constantly get his take on the world. So, I guess you’d call the Drudge Report a “human edited news aggregator.” There you go, a new Drudge geek term…

You know it’s been a couple of slow news days on Drudge when the top story yesterday all day long was the Clinton Library dedication, and this morning it’s Michael Jackson being sued by a furniture store. But slow news days are pretty revealing about what interests Drudge.

This morning, we see TV ratings news, surprising celebrity quotes from Jim Carrey and Linda Ronstadt, and sensationalizing the small Michael Jackson story. He also really likes to follow Howard Stern - he’s got a couple of stories posted there today. Of course, if Drudge posts it on his website, is it really a small story anymore?

It’s a slow day over at Drudge, but you can see one of his favorite recurring themes in action tonight. Animal oddities or extremes is a fav of Matt Drudge. Tonight we see the swarm of the locusts in Egypt and the attack of the 19-ft long Great White Shark in Cape Town. I don’t ever think it’s coincidence when Matt posts items in pairs or threesomes that relate to each other. He’s a talented news guy and that’s part of the entertainment value. The fact that he hits these themes and relationships at warp speed is probably most interesting to me.

I was listening to Drudge Radio tonight and thinking that Matt Drudge would have a great voice for a cartoon. It’s just quirky and non-serious enough to make a great character. Hey, maybe he could even play a funny news reporter…

I’ll be trying out a couple of different styles of Drudge coverage over the next few days. Bear with me as I try to find the method that works best for me. There are lots of directions this blog can go, so I just need to find the one that speaks to me. Stay tuned…

I’m sure it’s stating the obvious to regular Drudge readers, but the Drudge Report is mostly a 5 1/2 day a week operation. I write this on a Saturday as I’ve looked at the snoozer of a Drudge Report today. Unless there’s big breaking news on the weekend, there just aren’t many Drudge Report updates. Often, Friday’s stories will linger into Saturday and there are just a few obligatory posts just to keep the site active. If the site’s updated at 100% on weekdays, I’d say it’s usually at 10% on weekends. I say 5 1/2 days a week because leading into Matt Drudge’s Sunday night radio show he heats up the site with lots of updates late in the day Sunday. As well as the in-your-face promo for his radio show…

Now, I certainly don’t blame Drudge for taking it easy on the weekend. He stays plenty busy the rest of the week, where he does nearly 24 hours-a-day posting even on not-so-big news days. The weekend is slow for news sites and networks all over on the weekend. But, I’m sure as Drudge’s critics would chime in, he’s supposed to be a legitimate news operation so he shouldn’t take the weekend “off.” I’ve personally seen him be pretty slow on the draw on the weekend, even when the big stories break. The question of whether he’s a major, “legitimate” news source is for another discussion.

I posted this over at Drudge Forum, but thought I’d get it over here also. Matt Drudge is getting a lot of press over his huge impact on election day. Even though big media outlets may have ruled election night as the tallies came in, I think that Drudge and bloggers totally dominated the daytime on election day. It was a snoozer of a news day if not for Drudge and the blogs out there. There has been a major shift in power to the online world and election day just amplified and illustrated that.

There are several articles out there pointing out that the exit poll data that Drudge posted midday on election day was incorrect data that shouldn’t have been released. They also point out that his story about Philadelphia having problems with votes already on the machines on election morning were mostly untrue.

So, the question I pose is was it wrong for Drudge to report those stories, even though they were credible at the time? Drudge is all about information wanting to be free, and he doesn’t hesitate to get the information out there for the most part. I personally almost never have a problem with him getting the news out there. On the exit poll story, he did post a correcting “use caution” follow up story quickly after there was some question of the usefulness of the exit poll data.

Matt Drudge is getting a lot of press over his huge impact on election day. Even though big media outlets may have ruled election night as the tallies came in, I think that Drudge and bloggers totally dominated the daytime on election day. It was a snoozer of a news day if not for Drudge and the blogs out there. There has been a major shift in power to the online world, and election day just amplified and illustrated that.

Not a big surprise, but the Drudge Report had a record day yesterday with 36,682,486 visits - the biggest day in the site’s history. That’s incredible traffic and a huge reach & influence for Matt Drudge. Can you imagine having that kind of power and reach with just a little single web page that you just update frequently?

Man, election night really is about one news story and one only. Ever tried to find other news stories out there on presidential election night? It’s just not there. The Drudge Report is really reflecting what’s out there: election coverage.

Drudge Report goes mainstream for a brief time…

Drudge is getting into the regular election reporting stuff, just like a big media outlet. Complete with a map (from Yahoo!), a chart, and an electoral counter. I guess that’s the most efficient way to report this thing, but it’s not as interesting as a series of nice sensational headlines. Maybe when some weirdness happens later tonight, we’ll see some of that.

Good day for Drudge- He got to trump major media on the first exit poll numbers, and he also broke the Philadelphia voting problems story this morning.

CBS Marketwatch news story credits Drudge with the stock market response to the early exit poll numbers:

Dow dips into negative territory ($INDU) By Tomi Kilgore
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) — The Dow industrials ($INDU) dipped briefly into negative territory after a late-day sell-off erased earlier gains of as much as 79 points. The Dow was last up 6 points at 10,061, but hit a low of 10,047 a few minutes earlier. “The only thing I can see is that the Drudge Report shows the preliminary exit polls showing Kerry within striking distance,” said Jay Suskind, director of trading of Ryan, Beck & Co. Miller Tabak equity strategist Peter Boockvar said the fall was on nothing in particular, but also mentioned the Drudge Report showing that Kerry was running more competitively than initially thought.

If you were wondering the kind of power Drudge has.

While listening to Drudge’s Radio show tonight, I was struck by how different it is than his Drudge Report website. There are a lot of differences, but the one I’ll focus on here is the politics. I believe that the Drudge Report is somewhat conservative, but not excessively so. Some may argue with this, but he follows the news on the website whichever way it goes. I see a slight imbalance, where he may emphasize Right leaning stories, or he may ignore or downplay the occasional story that might be damaging to the conservatives. However, I really think he pounds both sides regularly on the Drudge Report. There’s also not a lot of personal commentary on the stories he reports there. The drama and impact are almost entirely through Drudge’s selection of the story, crafting of the headline, and placement on the site.

The flip side to this is Drudge Radio. While Drudge follows many of the same stories as he runs on the Drudge Report, the radio show is almost entirely commentary. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill Right wing talk show for the most part. (See my little graph I threw together above.) Matt Drudge is entertaining on his radio show, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not in the same league as the Drudge Report. And the very overt Right side politics on the radio show makes it less sensational and probably with a smaller appeal than his Drudge Report.