By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

New York reports that Gawker blogger Jessica Coen earns $30,000 a year. Cool beans for a gal who generates advertising revenue with gossip tidbits betwixt episodes of her “Matt Drudge Ignores Me” running gag, if a bit low income for a New Yorker.

Of course, you can get paid $800K a year to be Matt Drudge…But I think both Jessica and I get out more.

But don’t feel sorry for the 30 Thousand Dollar Woman just yet. Wonkette’s Ana Maria Cox just told an audience at Syracuse University (quoted in Women’s Wear Daily this month) that “Blogging is ridiculously easy to do…My cat could do it” and that the stereotype of bloggers spending all day in their pajamas was “mostly true, unfortunately.”

So with no commuting costs or career wardrobe needs, I imagine “Gawkette” can afford a nice, clean building with a doorman and a non-psychotic roommate. Since she’s not a celebrity in her own right yet, she’d be more likely than Matt Drudge to be accepted by a Manhattan co-op board. (Of course, since Matt will never consent to pay New York income taxes, it’s a moot point.) Actually, Matt himself earned slightly over that income when he first started to make money off the Drudge Report (via contracts with AOL and Wired). And he lived in a crappy Hollywood neighborhood that isn’t safe for a single woman.

When I thought about it, Jess is actually doing a nice bit of PR for Drudge. She’s keeping his name in the daily papers, albeit the online equivalent. Thirty K for being Lizzie Grubman and Hedda Hopper rolled into one. I’ve said before that he really doesn’t do his own PR very well. In a sense, “Matt Drudge Ignores Me” is tantamount to buying a T-shirt emblazoned with a Gap or Tommy Hilfiger logo: the user has spent her own resources (in this case, time rather than money) to further someone else’s brand.

“But wait a sec, Rego,” you may say. “Gawkette’s rolling in profit for dropping names and disseminating information that people want and advertisers are willing to underwrite –and you get paid Jacques Pschitt for composing entire essays on one individual that people may or may not read at all, much less in their entirety. Get with the program, chick! If you like Drudge so damned much, why don’t you embrace the spirit of his legacy instead of spending your down time pontificating on the philosophical aspects of every half-baked piece of drivel that slobbers out of his mouth? Stick your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the world instead of sticking it where it doesn’t belong!”

Um, okay, right. It should’ve been me.

Seriously, there is method in my madness. And for the record, props to both Matt and his accidental publicist-cum-cyberstalker for making a profit off the Net. I actually have a day job (even if the description does currently have “freelance” in the title) that takes me away from the blog now and then. While the stuff you read here isn’t posted exclusively for my own enjoyment, I see a Web presence as a secondary tool. I know fairly little about Jessica Coen, but I know enough about Matt Drudge (See FAQs on Drudge Parts 1 and 2) to know that I don’t want his job.

I don’t want the commitment that comes with running a site like the Drudge Report. He has a passion that I don’t share. I can, however, “outsource” him to do what I lack the time and inclination to do. When I write about Matt Drudge, in a way I’m not really writing about Matt Drudge…even when I discuss specifics on his life and idiosyncracies. I’ll leave you to figure out what that is.

Readers may recall my somewhat ambivalent feelings toward G-Grrl. But I’m not one to pick a catfight with a member of the tribe three days before Rosh Hashanah. Happy New Year to Gawkerbabe and Drudgemuffin. Let’s all try to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.