I guess it’s time for the world to potentially end again…Drudge style….

Seriously, though, the New Orleans situation is dire. Our hearts go out to those affected.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Today’s Drudge Report posts a story about the woman whose videotaped gang beating was the subject of Matt’s radio show two Sundays ago and my entry a few posts ago (Don’t Let Him Be Misunderstood). Sorry I can’t link directly on this computer, but as part of his commentary on the underside of the Internet, Matt played an audio of a woman who, according to the person filming, reportedly “snitched” on the wrong person. The short version of the story is that it was played on the local news and the victim saw herself and notified police.

Contrary to claims, the woman survived the beating and was punished not for being a tattletale, but for dissing the wrong guy.

While Drudge is clearly mentioned in the linked story, I don’t get the feeling that Matt is gleefully claiming credit for his role in facilitating justice. Had he really wanted to shamelessly toot his horn, I suppose he would have flashed his police alarm on the site. It’s one of many links on the page, toward the bottom.

Matt Drudge is using Breitbart.com to link to many of his wire stories now. So, he’ll be giving a tremendous amount of traffic and potential ad revenue to Breitbart.com…to his partner and pal. It’s very close to just bringing it all “in house” instead of linking to the story on MyWay, Yahoo! or others as he’s always done. Matt would probably run the wire-driven site himself if he had time. But this is pretty close and a major change in the way he does business.

By RegoPark
Contributing Weblogger

While the “citizen journalist” term was coined long ago, the news networks have caught onto the concept that anyone can contribute news coverage worthy of dissemination. CNN used the term the other day in a call for live video of Hurricane Katrina. An ABC news affiliate was doing something similar back in July.

As Drudge once said, Anyone from anywhere can report anything.

I’ll have to research it a bit more later, but it looks like Drudge’s old right hand man has fired up his own news website. Breitbart.com. Drudge linked to a hurricane story there tonight. Of course, the Breitbart.com server is bogged down at the moment…possibly not fully scaled to handle being “Drudged” yet…

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Since we don’t have the benefit of a Matt Drudge blog (that’s us, thank you very much), the attitude or opinion behind the linked headline on any given day’s Drudge Report is conjecture and speculation. One reason I tune into Matt’s radio show — even though I’m no fan of talk radio — is that it’s fun to monitor the Drudge Report’s daily links and see if the vibe I think I’m getting matches his own take on a story. But I find that Drudge site viewers and broadcast listeners look for what they want to see and listen for what they want to hear. Frankly, anyone leaning in any direction other than left of center was going to be demonized for being the first to report on a book that says Chelsea Clinton was conceived by rape. However we feel about the author or his intentions, it is newsworthy that someone with any remote connection to Bill Clinton would choose to share these allegations in a book and risk a broad range of consequences. The fact that Matt Drudge was “on” the story does not mean he is insensitive to someone’s pain or that he gleefully bore those tidings. But either you’re willing to consider this possibility, or you’re not. As with any other household media name, after awhile everyone has decided how they feel about Drudge, what his true modus operandi is, his role in a purported right-wing conspiracy, and the agenda behind today or tomorrow’s Drudge headline.

So I can’t imagine this week’s link to an example of the Internet’s underside is going to be interpreted in its intended context. “The Internet can go either way,” Matt said last Sunday night. “It’s going to tilt.” Not only is violent porn and grisly live footage of just about anything uploadable for our viewing pleasure, but some people have really upped the ante in the “brazenness” category. The link I’m talking about is to a video of a raw, vicious gang beating of a woman who snitched on the wrong person…enthusiastically taped by a participant in the madding crowd.

I fear that the only message will come out is that Drudge has “come to a new low in sleaze” or that he has himself “set a new precedent in shock journalism”. Which is a frustrating shame, because given the chance, something as simple as a Drudge link can powerfully communicate a philosophical issue as effectively as a photograph. How much bad should be taken with the good? Can — and should — material like this be regulated? What can be considered “freedom of the press” now that everyone can have their own Web presence and communicate a message or archive video and audio material for the world to access? I don’t see that Matt has made his own current opinions on Internet regulation clear. My own interpretation of this week’s links and radio comments is that he’s wrestling with that issue right now — not trying to effect shock or turn a political tide.

Unfortunately, this is bound to be misunderstood. When all is said and done, people will swallow what they want to digest.

By RegoPark
Contributing Weblogger

I promise, that’ll be the most tasteless title I’ll ever post here. It was yesterday in 1998 that Bill Clinton admitted that there was, in fact, merit to a certain screaming headline on the Drudge Report.

Now, I voted for Bill both times. I was one of the 15 American people who didn’t believe the hype about that woman, Miss Lewinsky, until he appeared on-camera with that everybody-else-culpa confession. I don’t think the transgressions were time-sensitive and security-sensitive enough to justify the time and taxes spent in the Starr investigation. At the time, I assumed most politicians screwed around and didn’t know what the fuss was all about. Heck, I don’t even recall knowing who Matt was until years after the fact. (I was taking a vacation from TV around that time, so I never saw his smiling mug on Nightline.) All I knew was that Bill Clinton was the most tightly scrutinized president in the history of the United States from Inauguration Day on…and surely, nobody who busted his rear that hard to get to the Oval Office would be that stupid and self-destructive.

But as luck and a project would have it, I carefully studied the matter retrospectively from all angles. I now feel that whatever Matt Drudge’s limitations, there was, in fact, a security issue that justified the investigation into this seemingly private affair.

Drudge/Clinton Trivia #1: Matt’s mother, who is a liberal attorney, volunteered in the Clinton White House in the first part of his term. She turned on him, though, according to Matt’s 2003 interview in Radar. (What good Jewish mom supports a president who calls her little boy Sludge?)

Drudge/Clinton Trivia #2: Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. Monica Lewinsky was the valedictorian of Bel Air Prep School. Matt Drudge barely graduated from high school.

Anyway, our boy’s frying bigger fish now. For what it’s worth, happy anniversary, Drudge. You made it happen.

And happy anniversary, Bill and Monica. You made it happen.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Apparently we have been discovered by Gawker, who has reprinted and linked Matt Drudge quotes from the DrudgeBlog Quiz (along with others from other sources). And yes, he’s uttered even funnier indiscretions.

At least some of you find the “Matt Drudge Ignores Me” running gag amusing, which I’ve found dumb but innocuous enough, in which Jessica Coen sends repeated IMs to Matt ranging from “Happy Hannukah” to “Did you get that photo taken at Glamour Shots?” As I recall, she also reprints bogus “Drudge sighting” rumors in which he allegedly walked around in public in New York with an unattractive woman. Whatever.

Most of the Drudge quotes are funny. I do take exception at presenting the second phrase, from 1998, for us to “enjoy”:

“I was a stutterer. I had a twitch inside all the time—a lot of raw energy. I was lonely…I still am.”

There is nothing funny, fair or classy about rubbing loneliness or personal development issues in someone’s face. Of all the archives I’ve accumulated on Drudge, I have never seen any evidence of him being malicious. Indiscreet, careless, and stupid sometimes, yes. (That’s why he’s a pet project of mine — he’s a fascinating PR case study.)

When I posted that quote, along with others in the DrudgeBlog quiz, I was trying to get participants to really think about how much they know about Matt Drudge. The assembled sentences are the literary equivalent of a police lineup. I wasn’t inviting anyone to make fun of the “lonely” quote, as I’m sure anyone who read it understands.

But it seems to me — sorry, hold on, gotta fish that burr out of my buttocks here…

…that Gawker’s “Quotable Drudge” was in a less than honorable context and suggests that we ought to get a chuckle out of Drudge complaining of loneliness.

I’m critical and teasing of Matt when it’s called for, but when you get past the hype and the crap and the layers upon layers of media interpretation, he’s actually someone worth paying attention to. And certainly worth a modicum of respect, dignity and compassion.

By RegoPark
Contributing Weblogger

I’m a bit short on time this week, so more FAQs are coming shortly. If you’ve posted a question that I haven’t addressed yet, it will be soon. Meanwhile, check out last entry’s first FAQs batch and feel free to post new questions below in the comment box.

What’s with the hat?

The hat is “a persona”. Don’t believe anything you read about Matt walking around town with it or having done so back in his younger days. (Especially if it’s followed by a comment like, “he was a loner, but he talked to me because I didn’t judge the Drudge.”) He said in one 2000 interview that he doesn’t even wear it that much anymore, and that’s apparently accurate. In general, he seems to wear one where he wants to be recognized and avoids it when he wants to be alone. He always shows up with one at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner (paired with a tux). He chose to pose with one for a Washington Post article this spring on the Drudge Report’s 10-year anniversary. He also wore one for a Phoenix radio station’s June anniversary celebration at which he participated in a panel discussion. He wore that same hat a few days later when he appeared on Hannity & Colmes. However, he went without the hat for the Republican National Convention dinner, a Hannity appearance via satellite back in February, and does not wear one when he appears each year on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

The hat is reminiscent of Walter Winchell and the old muckrakers of the early 20th century. Despite the hype, Winchell is NOT Drudge’s idol. He has, however, studied his style and radio delivery.

Whatever happened with the Blumenthal lawsuit?

Sidney Blumenthal dropped the lawsuit for financial reasons. It didn’t get that much coverage, but Matt is apparently his own publicist and e-mailing a message “Why aren’t you writing about me?” isn’t a very effective way to generate coverage from the New York Times. At any rate, the dropping of a lawsuit or criminal charges tends to be less newsworthy than an arrest or the initial filing of a suit.

On one hand, an economic “might makes right” might have prevailed in this situation. Matt’s supporters set up a legal defense fund in his name and the Blumenthals were pursuing the libel suit with their own savings.

Regardless of how you feel about the merits of the Blumenthal suit or Matt’s decision to post a rumor about covered-up spousal abuse, the likelihood of the plaintiffs collecting $30 million was not good. Drudge retracted the story within 24 hours. We can debate over the sincerity or sufficiency of his apology, but the legal burden was on the Blumenthals to prove malicious intent. It’s interesting to note that while Drudge had little money at the time the suit was filed, AOL was a co-defendant because it was contracting with Matt at the time. (AOL was later cleared of liability).

This is my understanding from my reading: Matt Drudge maintains Sidney first demanded the source for the story, and that Matt refused, and the Blumenthals then filed their suit after that. Interestingly enough, Matt claims to have heard the news of the suit from the radio.

Did Matt Drudge really write the poetry in Drudge Manifesto?

I can’t offer a definite answer, but I’ll provide the facts for you to make up your own mind.

The free verse is consistent with the writing style of the early “Drudge Report” e-mails in which he did have to write more featurey intros than he does now.

Drudge Manifesto was written “with” his friend Julia Phillips. Julia wrote the 600-plus Hollywood tell-all You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, which used some postmodern literary devices, but she really let loose on her second and final book, Driving Under the Affluence. This book contains much of the same vocabulary, literary devices, and actual phrases you find in Drudge Manifesto – including the talking pet. I also question whether Matt would have chosen on his own to say that his parents divorced in one sentence and claim that Dad “…shacked up with Someone New” in the next sentence right after naming his parents’ first names. Julia spent the entirety of her two autobiographies bitching about her dear dead neurotic hypocritical mother.

The epilogue is definitely Matt’s. The combined corporate combination names are also his.

Matt does not feel confident in his own ability to write. He told Playboy in 1998 that he can’t do it and can’t even spell or write cursive. While I’d personally argue that he writes better than he thinks he can in the evidence I have, I can say this for sure: he definitely appreciates free verse.

Where did he get the story about the Clinton/Lewinsky affair?

I originally understood — and posted here before — that Matt’s source was Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent who relishes taking credit for her role in leaking this scandal. Lucianne had been working with Linda Tripp on a book project that, if I understand correctly, did not ultimately materialize. She urged Linda to tape record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky. It turns out that he’d gotten communication on this rumor before which he didn’t at first act upon.

At Matt’s first phone call to Lucianne, she knew that Newsweek had killed a piece by Michael Isikoff about the intern story and that there were shouting arguments in the office. She offered to transmit Monica’s resume to Matt, which he posted on the Drudge Report. The breaking news story was as much about Newsweek’s decision to ax the piece as it was about the Presidential scandal itself.

Does Matt check his facts or sources?

I guess some mysteries are meant to be left unsolved. He definitely does not have time to check all of them. But he does pursue a few sources. When the story of Paris Hilton’s Sidekick hacking got out, he called some of the numbers and eventually got an on-air interview with one of her acquaintances. When I compared the entire speech and Q&A at the Washington Press Club in 1998, the transcript reads Matt as saying that he knocked on Monica Lewinsky’s door in L.A. The Drudge Manifesto transcript inexplicably eliminates that line. The elimination may have come from the publisher rather than Matt himself, but that piqued my curiosity.

More FAQs to come when time permits. Stay tuned…

APRIL FOOLS!

Drudge will sell out to MSNBC when hell freezes over and he misses the scoop.

At what point along the reading did you suspect something?

(Not that Akureyri, Iceland is such a terrible place to be, but I’ve never heard anything about him being there.)

One goal of mine at DrudgeBlog is to clear up preventable misunderstanding about Matt Drudge’s motivations and intentions..and to share some interesting things I’ve learned during my year of “Drudge Studies”:

FAQS - Part One

Why does Drudge choose the links he does?

These are columnists and online publications that he himself reads daily and considers interesting and relevant. Not all are conservative, or even on good terms with him. For example, Sidney Blumenthal sued Matt for $30 million and they still haven’t called a truce. He didn’t even link to Refdesk, his father’s site, for a long time because he didn’t use it.

He has dropped links when someone has burned him (New York Press, Jeannette Walls) or when site members have become too politically incorrect even for him (Free Republic).

Why doesn’t Drudge revamp the format of his site?

Not only is DR the same black-and-white macho-font it has been for ten years, it’s also on an ancient version of Netscape. He hates Java and apps. “I’m the worst marketer out there,” Matt said in one interview. “I just don’t care. I throw all my energy into the site.” Simplicity is an important value for him in more ways than one — he has never had more than one person working for him.

Based on the breadth of interviews I’ve read, Matt is telling the truth about not caring. And keep in mind how he spells, writes and dresses. He admits he’s a loner. And those pop-ups, too. This is not a home boy who cares what people thinks. As for the ever-changing nature of the web…trust me. He really doesn’t care.

In a way, though, that format has become a trademark for him and if it’s worked for him this long, there’s no need to mess with it. (Speaking from a marketing side, it might confuse his audience’s expectations — and arguably weaken his brand identity– if the site were made over at this point.)

He’s also expecting — and has accepted — that he won’t be a powerhouse forever, whether that’s because the public “might get tired of the Drudge sensibility” or the charging for online content might become too widespread for his site to remain relevant. He’s not the kind of guy to go out of his way to stay in the game, at least on the marketing end. You can bet on it that he’s been hit up with solicitations to design the site. If he hasn’t bitten in ten years, chances are he’s not going to.

How do you make money off a free website?

Advertising. But before he began contracting with Intermarkets around 2000(the media company that brings you all those pop-ups), he sold a column to Wired and AOL.

When he first started out, DR was a $10 e-mail subscription. Today, with income from web ads and his radio show, sustaining the site is not a financial issue.

Why does Drudge advertise all these right-wing books and products?

Matt Drudge does not select what ads appear on his site. The media company handles the ads and even if Matt has control over the types of ads that run, he doesn’t have the time or inclination to micromanage that.

I want to make this perfectly clear. I’m not telling you to buy from the Conservative Book Club or that pop-ups are good for you. But understand how advertising works. Advertisers go through agency media buyers who select what media (websites, print, radio, etc.) will best reach their target audience. They, in turn, go through Intermarkets. Clients advertise on DR as part of their marketing strategy. Drudge himself has little to do with it.

Yes, you can argue he’s setting himself up for being misunderstood…see previous question.

How does Matt Drudge maintain his site so frequently and still have a life?

First of all, he doesn’t have what many people would consider a “life” in that he doesn’t go out that much except to travel (which he claims to do 30% of the time, and even then he’s working in his hotel room) and make occasional public appearances at special events. At last writing May 28, just when his assistant came back to work for him, he was working 14 hours a day…on a slow day.

But let’s start with the early days, before he had money and an assistant. Anybody with a modem and a cheap computer can report news. But to work a site full-time? He worked out of his home in an “inexpensive” (my quotes) Hollywood neighborhood with multiple computer screens, a police scanner, TV, and apparently used the phone a lot. In Drudge Manifesto, he claims to have filed reports from pay phones. It probably helped at first that he wasn’t living in the boondocks. He did mention he was lonely in at least one early interview. A common thread that pops up in his interviews is that he’s lonely but loves what he is doing.

From around 1999-2000 to early 2005, he had an assistant, Andrew Breitbart, who rejoined him in what must have been early June. Andrew has worked for him roughly 22 hours a week.

Matt can now afford a few more things that, I’m sure, streamlines his operation: he has been living close to the beach, where he can swim every day without dealing with gridlock, and now uses a Wi-Fi. Since at least February, he has Internet access in his car. Surprisingly, he doesn’t own a cell phone because he says it slows things down. He also broadcasts the radio show from his house, so he can update the site as he works and read IM messages from listeners. He also seems to go to the same travel destinations: he’s been to (and broadcasted from) Vegas at least three times in the past year and has been to London twice — once for three weeks. He has also been to Washington and New York in between. He likes that Europe has “lots of high-speed Internet access”, so presumably he can stay somewhere as long as he likes, work a day in the hotel room, and sightsee afterward.

How long has the Drudge Report been around?

That depends on your point of view. Matt Drudge, who worked in the CBS studio gift shop, began posting items he heard — and retrieved from executive suite garbage cans — at online newsgroups. When people started asking to be put on his mailing list, he began a $10 e-mail subscription to the Drudge Report. This got him a column at Wired and AOL, and, of course, he started the site we know today. He quit his job to work full-time on the Drudge Report in 1995.

Matt has posted “anniversary” announcements in April, although his book mentions that he began working on all this since winter 1994.

Why doesn’t he maintain his own archives?

He said in one interview that he knows he’s been wrong on occasion and doesn’t want the humiliation of his words coming back to haunt him. (Oh, yeah, you can read that Blumenthal story and retraction on The Smoking Gun.) You’ll notice, however, that he does link to Drudge Report Archives, which is run by an individual who is not connected to him in any way. Unfortunately, many of the Drudge Report’s early years are not archived.

What is Matt Drudge’s educational and journalistic background?

Drudge, who claimed he “stopped learning” when he was 12 and that “they were not able to stuff me like a sausage”, claims he barely graduated from high school and didn’t even try to apply to college. In one article he said he didn’t write for the school newspaper; in another he said he did but guessed he wasn’t very good at it. He basically taught himself everything he knows.

Can’t anybody do what Matt Drudge does? What makes him so special or qualified?

In terms of “qualification,” you could say that he’s got ten years of experience breaking hundreds of stories. Maybe not, by some people’s opinions, very well or accurately. But this FAQ is about facts, so I’ll leave that at that.

Matt himself insists that anyone from anywhere can report anything. All you need is a computer and a modem. But he doesn’t know what or how he’d do all that as successfully as he has were he to start out today. Matt had the right idea at the right time. He’s not the best at what he does, but he was the first. Because of a combination of dedication and lucky breaks, the Drudge Report gets lots more eyeballs than the typical independent news site. Yes, you and I can post news on our own sites. The advantage of the Drudge Report lies in his contact base and number of readers. When someone wants to leak news, Drudge is the first name people think of. At least right now.

Is Matt Drudge or his site co-opted by right-wing political operatives?

Matt Drudge says (though he doesn’t emphasize this to every reporter or colleague he breathes on) that he is not a right-wing Republican. And guess what? From all the raw interview footage and other archives I’ve found, he’s telling the truth. He is a populist and libertarian, which from my own political discussions with many libertarians, I have no trouble believing. He has noted in the press that he has voted for Jerry Brown and Ralph Nader, and didn’t decide right away whom to vote for in 2000. He told Playboy in 1998 that he wished Jimmy Carter were still President.

Matt Drudge claimed he has never made any political contributions, and maintains that an online record of his donation to the Republican National Committee is incorrect and that someone used his name to donate the $2,000+ of soft money. It would seem a little odd for him to lie about that, considering that he hasn’t kept his support for Republican candidates a secret. He co-hosted a 2004 GOP event with several other people. (Is there any chance that an in-kind donation could have caused a documental misunderstanding?)

Anyway, the scanned form online lists the donor’s name as “Matt Drudge”. Most people who use nicknames still write checks and fill out donation forms with their legal first names. Matthew is Drudge’s legal name and an item online reported that his telephone greeting gives the name Matthew, not Matt. So while it would seem weird that someone would make a donation under false pretenses and not leave a paper trail, the donation itself looks pretty fishy. So the truth could go either way.

Matt does call himself a conservative. When he discusses his own politics, he uniformly emphasizes that he wants to pay less taxes and is pro-life. But the other issue that burns a fire under his seat is privacy laws.

His involvement with “the right” is a two-way street. On one hand, he knows he attracts readers and political allies who are Republican loyalists and more conservative than he is. He didn’t worry about his financial supporters’ politics when he was going through a $30 million lawsuit. And let’s face it, Clinton was a common enemy for a lot of people in the late ’90s. On the flip side, it seems that lots of conservatives suck up to Drudge for political reasons (not that liberals aren’t guilty of the same thing elsewhere). I was really surprised, for example, that Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum invited Matt to speak at one of their events. It seems beneath her to have anything to do with someone whom she would ordinarily consider to be coarsening the public discourse. I guess he didn’t mention the cigar story in her presence. He referred to Pat Robertson as a jerk on his radio show in October 2005, so he isn’t too worried about toeing the conservative line.

When you observe Matt Drudge in more “neutral” interview settings, a different picture emerges. His liberal friends include the late Julia Phillips and Camille Paglia, whose book he hyped on the site and his radio show. Remember: advertising is paid for, but PR is free.

To be continued….

It’s funny and dirty all in one shot. Thanks Matt!

By RegoPark
Contributing Weblogger

It’s often been complained that Drudge doesn’t really break his own stories but simply acts as a news aggregator. He’s always had his sporadic exclusives, usually inside news sources in Washington or L.A., but this week he’s posted exclusives that were puzzlingly original: Martha Stewart’s appearance at an upstate NY zoning board, where she unsuccessfully petitioned to build a barn for her chickens and goats, and a police raid at a rave in the Czech Republic. Is Matt scooping the Prague Post, or does he have well-connected techno-buddies across the pond?

By RegoPark
Contributing Weblogger

It’s always fun to guess Matt Drudge’s own attitudes on a story (or hidden meanings) behind his headlines. The best way to assess his M.O., however, is by tuning in to his Sunday night radio show, which Arbitron currently ranks as #1 in its time slot (OK, OK, it’s late Sunday night).

Anyone notice a contrast between his delivery of a news item on-air and hyping it online?