Exactly 12 stories are currently posted on Drudge at this writing. To be fair, it’s a 2-man operation (1 man 14 hours a day, the other 22 hours a week) and a growing boy’s gotta sleep…Just an observation, that’s all.

It seems that more and more of Drudge’s edgy stories come from or are either targeted and expedited by his henchman, Andrew Breitbart, who left him for a few months early this year before returning. In time he set up his own website from which Matt linked his stories. I’ve mentioned before that Andrew has been putting in roughly 22 hours a week unless something has changed since his return to the Drudge Report. In any case, Gilligan’s own contributions to the running of the ship are now delineated and accounted for.

…That the tsunami rocked the Indian ocean and I swear, only Drudge was onto it at first before anyone else began to take it seriously.

Happy Hanukkah.

Merry Christmas everyone. Drudge is celebrating today with all green and red fonts. Have a great holiday.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

The year’s megastorms appear to be behind us, but it might be fun to peek at Matt Drudge’s own window on the weather world…a.k.a. the Drudge Report compound, a.k.a. home, sweet home. Nothing like a condo tower over Biscayne Bay to feed a guy’s weather obsession.

Lance and I have both been playing hooky from the blog this week, with him on vacation and me trying to wrap up my book.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas from DrudgeBlog!

I haven’t been posting much lately. I got a new job with my company and have been kind of working both jobs. My time has been crunched. I should be able to resume normal operations during the holidays.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Another chapter on the story of Internet accountability has been played out on an entry of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where up to now you and I could edit entries on anyone, anything, anyhow. Apparently someone has posted a fake bio, allegedly as a prank, on a Nashville journalist with details of how he supposedly knew and was connected to the assassinations of JFK and RFK.

“My fear is that we’re going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result,” hoax victim John Siegenthaler told USA Today.

I wish I had more time today to go into this issue, so I’ll have to leave this as it is. But I question whether the real Achilles heel in online information sites is the potential for malicious hoaxes or pranks gone too far. Truth is complicated, and news consumers tend to prefer hard, tangible facts or the appearance thereof. And a decade after most of you readers out there have been online, we’re still weaning ourselves from the paradigm that all online news is accurate online news.

If you take Matt Drudge’s own Wiki entry, for example, you don’t get so much of a taste of his modus operandi — particularly his own concerns and championship of freedom of the Internet from government regulation — as you get over the controversy over whether he had gay relationships. (You’ll find a long debate raging on the page’s edit board over this.) I have no problem over the inclusion of the gay rumors, but hearsay and speculation needs more context than it is given. I don’t consider it appropriate, for example, that his supposed former “boyfriend” is listed under his relationships along with the name of his father.

I actually did correct one bit of mistaken info on the page (the name of the high school from which he ultimately graduated), but that’s for another day…

Back to work…

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Last month’s Editor and Publisher discussed the recent granting of White House press conference passes to bloggers. As I argued last June, the line between Constitutional right and privilege is a blurry one, but anyone willing to observe and respect official press protocol should be granted the same access to the official daily press briefings…and if granting access to the physical White House is such a security issue, then maybe it’s high time official press communication should be relocated.

Until this year’s milestone credentialing of FishBowlDC blogger Garrett Graff, credentials were restricted to representatives of for-profit news organizations. Others, like Matt Drudge, have been granted daily passes — Matt via an invitation from ABC’s Mark Halperin. Somehow the system didn’t cover all the security bases. No one, let alone someone with questionable credentials and a checkered past like Jeff Gannon, was supposed to receive repeat “daily” passes over a period of years.

But now the Powers That Be have relented and the expected onslaught of amateurs hasn’t quite materialized. Why haven’t bloggers and other “citizen journalists” taken the chance to go beyond kvetching about the government and proactively take on the Press Secretary?

Strupp quoted one insider as speculating that the lack of interest may stem from the fact that the press briefings are not all that interesting, and can be seen on C-SPAN, with transcripts on the Web: “Maybe bloggers have better things to do, after the novelty has worn off.” Even Graff, the Neil Armstrong of the White House Press Bloggers, agrees that “briefings just aren’t that interesting on a day-to-day basis, and there is not a lot of reason for bloggers to go.”

Another insider states that many bloggers go online for fun and need to work at real jobs during the day. “People are busy,” he says. Strupp regrets this, as nonofficial journalists “have particular areas of obsession or expertise that can lead to unusual, and often good, questions.”

I think Strupp is correct in that there isn’t compelling enough reason for bloggers to appear every day. He points out that White House briefings are televised on C-SPAN and transcripts are available — but to that I’d argue that most people who go through the trouble of getting White House cred do it not because they want to get past the velvet rope and wow their friends, but because they actually have questions for the President’s representative. Others could argue that bloggers don’t go because they’re not really as serious as they pretend to be. But I think the media is all missing out on a few major factors:

Most independent news gatherers and bloggers cannot afford to support themselves solely with their websites or arrange their lives around White House briefings.
Most independent news gatherers and bloggers have day jobs.
Most independent news gatherers and bloggers do not live in the Washington, DC area.
Most independent news gatherers and bloggers lack the time and manpower to attend briefings and maintain their websites.
Most (ditto ditto ditto) need to hear what the Press Secretary has to say before formulating and asking intelligent questions. They don’t have bosses and deadlines forcing them to head to the White House with an agenda already intact.

What we really need — and what would generate “citizen journalism” participation in official press meetings — would be to schedule them online. In addition to the press “face time” at the literal White House, Scott McClellan could communicate with bloggers via podcast or online chat. This would eliminate the security risks of physical press conferences. The only credentialing necessary would be to register with the White House website. Conduct and protocol guidelines could be clearly established for less-than-seasoned journalists, and participation in the online conference would be a privilege that could be revoked.

Bloggers and other unofficial journalists bring their own set of pros and cons to the game. They can be disruptive, superficial, noncommital, and ridiculously subjective. They can also be more thoughtful and less biased, pressured, jaded, hardened, or burnt-out than their professional counterparts.

Let’s face it. Journalism is an extremely competitive, low-paying profession for most people in the industry. The hours stink, security is not that great. It can be a thankless, dangerous, even less-than-fulfilling line of work for many talented would-be newsmen and women. Chances are that if you have potential as a journalist, you have potential for something else that offers more security and a saner lifestyle. The country is full of people who have lots of salient, thought-provoking questions for the President. Questions that could well change the direction of most daily press conferences. In any case, the media is not and should not be restricted to those who make journalism their full-time career. Let’s hear from the others.

As Matt said years ago, freedom of the press belongs to anyone who owns one. Regardless of how many citizen journalists have the time or leisure to jump at this new opportunity set before us, this is a milestone to celebrate…and not take lightly.