drudge blog

By RegoPark
Contributing Blogger

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post gets one thing right — the Drudge Report has, indeed, come of age. Or maybe buzz has gotten around that if you ask Drudge reasonably intelligent, nonconfrontational questions, you’ll get reasonably intelligent, nonconfrontational answers.

Now, all this can be vaguely troubling for a Drudge reader attracted to his site because he’s always been the flasher in the White House — albeit all he’s flashed is an Elian T-shirt in Janet Reno’s face at the White House Correspondents Dinner many moons back. What this means to me is that the mainstream media has moved past the muck of the old 64K question - is this journalism? - past the old Blumenthal lawsuit, past Lewinsky, past the old fedora schtick and thumb-in-nosing some people and brown-nosing others… to the point that when Matt does grant a rare television interview, I actually turn off the TV having learned something and respecting him more. It’s amazing what kind of journalistic gems can be mined when a subject isn’t fielding questions about his hat and his sex life.

While he did make a teensy bit of a dork of himself on Hannity & Colmes last February, Matt redeemed himself this week on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Claiming that he feels like a “ten-year-old granddad” as he marks an entire decade of the Drudge Report, it was definitely a good day at the C-SPAN studio. (Check out this and previous Drudge interviews with a video search at C-SPAN. )

I don’t consider Matt Drudge to be particularly PR-savvy, but that’s for another entry. But he has mastered the Guerilla PR concept of positioning oneself as an expert. Once you’ve grown accustomed to Matt’s interview style, and consequently attuned to Matt’s limitations, you realize his reactions in interviews are very kneejerk, very rooted in pride and self-preservation. Knowing how ornery he can get on his radio show, particularly when he gets started on his pet peeve du jour — the words “blog” and “blogger”, which invariably launches a silly litany of rhymes like “frog” and “dog” — I was pleasantly surprised with how well Matt carried himself. It was ironic to watch him sit there calm, cool and collected while Brian Lamb got all crusty on us, interrupting a caller with a crochety lecture about getting his facts straight. (Matt made a valiant effort to hold back, but nope, he couldn’t restrain himself from saying “booger” on C-SPAN.)

I admit I did a double-take on Matt’s comment that his handy-dandy broadband antenna was “not very expensive — less than $100 a month.” Good to know he hasn’t outgrown the concept of money with his success. I suppose it’s very cost-effective for “institutional” use — someone who’s online enough during the day to justify the monthly bill probably needs to be locked up, and undoubtedly locked up someplace boring enough to use that cool little toy.

But the Drudge Report is an institution, and now even much of the mainstream media grudgingly agrees it’s an institution. And if Matt’s happy there and eating nutritious food, then that’s all that matters.

RegoPark is a pseudonym for a writer with a background in marketing communications. She is currently working on a novel about PR and the alternative media.