drudge blog

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….