By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

At our sister site, Drudge Forum, where someone in power has seen fit to knight me Drudge Analyst, I once posted a thread asking “What Would You Like to Know / Understand About Drudge?” By far, what inquiring minds most want to know is how Matt possibly has time to do efficiently operate his website and have a life. Part of my multi-pronged reply was, he doesn’t have as much of a “life” as Joe Average would describe it. He’s said that the “media is his mistress” and that his social life is “zero”. In his 1998 Playboy interview, he said that he didn’t have a family and was starting to long for one. He’s told the Washington Post that he was still lonely. So.

Another answer is, Matt Drudge can afford to streamline his operation to the max. Since he lives on the beach, it’s more convenient to come and go in complete privacy. Every article I read about his newsroom boasts of multiple computers, TVs, a constantly running police scanner, and, of course, his phone. While he certainly had much of that setup in his obscure years, he can now afford hotel rooms with high-speed Internet and, most recently, install broadband in his car.

The third answer points to his one and only assistant, Andrew Breitbart…Hollywood expose writer who describes himself in Reason as “Matt Drudge’s bitch.” Of all the press articles in my archives, I still hadn’t found a firm answer to how much the Drudge Sidekick actually contributed to the site….until now. Press coverage of Andrew has described him as the Drudge “Webmaster”, but in articles that focus on Matt, it’s unclear whether Andrew updates the site only when Drudge is “sleeping or on vacation” or works every day. (And Matt gallivants a bit - in the past ten months, without trying to, I’ve gathered that he’s at least been to Vegas twice, as well as Southern California, New York, and London. )

So how dependent is Matt upon his boy Friday? And given the logistics of running the site, what would it take to throw a monkey wrench in the works?

Following up with this week’s story, I did a little more recent checking on this Drudge sidekick whom Arianna Huffington hopes to hire away for her upcoming blog enterprise. Andrew is actually a former researcher for Arianna, which makes the hoopla a bit less conspiratorial than the Observer and Washington Times intimate.

Let’s stop a second to update the scorecard:

Drudge: libertarian. Breitbart: conservative. Arianna: conservative-turned-liberal.

Huffington Report: a “culture and politics webzine in the classic mold of Salon or Slate.”
“It will have breaking news, a press commentary section called ‘Eat the Press’ and its most interesting innovation, a group blog manned by the cultural and media elite: Sen. Jon Corzine, Larry David, Barry Diller, Tom Freston, David Geffen, Vernon Jordan, Gwyneth Paltrow and Harry Evans and his wife, Tina Brown. That’s just to name a few, and Huffington is still recruiting,”(according to Business 2.0) and Warren Beatty (Observer)

Drudge Report: anti-media elite.

Arianna & Drudge: were definitely friends back in the 90s when she was conservative. She gave him at least one significant news tip. Don’t know their relationship now. She’s linked on his page, but then, so is Sidney Blumenthal.

Arianna & Breitbart: former employer-employee.

Drudge & Breitbart: old friends. Have worked together at least five years.

Drudge & ill-chosen ghostwriter Julia Phillips: old friends.

Breitbart quote on story: “There’s a lot of rumors out there that I cannot confirm or deny.” (Washington Times)

Drudge quote on story: “I’m the final edit. I have control on the Web site. I always have the final edit. My name is on the page.” (Observer)

One September 2004 blog profiled Andrew at home, where apparently he puts in at least 20, at most 24, hours a week. 9 to 2 every day? Hey, I can handle that! Considering that he’s Matt’s only employee and that Business 2.0 estimated Matt’s income at $800,000 a year that’s split with Andrew at an unknown proportion, it looks like a pretty cushy gig to me. He has plenty of time to write books like Hollywood, Interrupted…and unlike Matt, Andrew has three kids and family responsibilities.

Can you see someone like Drudge operating his site and having a significant significant other, let alone raising children? You have to delegate at some point - and by that I don’t mean “Honey, I’m using the computer and the TV and the phone and the other computer. Could you go into the kitchen and get Daddy a beer?”

At any rate, if Drudge has trusted 20-24 hours’ worth of work to a skilled researcher/writer who has all the relevant passwords and site infrastructure, et. al. who is not offering a straight answer to the press about whether or not Arianna is “in the process of hiring” him, then he has reason to worry — and regroup. Not that the Huffington Report is likely to be genuine competition — it’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, in my opinion — but because there’s a lot to be said for doing a little study of the soft science of human resources. When it comes to your livelihood, you gotta keep your enemies close and your friends at a distance. Or something like that.