drudge blog

Sorry, false alarm. Matt did not go to D.C. this year as usual to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner nor his annual interview on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. On the radio this hour, he said “Washington is not one of my favorite places right now…”

Bummer.

But do check out the C-SPAN archives for past Drudge appearances…

I moved Drudge Blog to a new web host today. Everything seems smooth. But let me know if you see anything weird.

Since 1998, Drudge has been invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner and appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal with Brian Lamb. These are the best interviews I’ve ever watched of Matt — the old Lamb man keeps him pretty calm and docile for the hour. All kidding aside, this annual interview makes for some of the best C-SPAN footage ever and Brian’s repectful mien brings the best out of ornery, excitable ol’ Matt.

The second sentence out of Drudge’s mouth at the first Washington Journal interview in 1998: “Brian Lamb, you’ve certainly changed my life…”

C-SPAN isn’t announcing specific Journal guests for Friday, but I assume Matt will show up that weekend when he’ll be in DC. I’d be shocked if he weren’t at both the dinner and the station, as usual. I’m warning you now, as Matt doesn’t always announce his TV appearances soon enough in advance to watch or record them…

Developing…

Today’s Drudge Report features, in fire-engine alarm drama king red, a report on an Apple Computers debate in San Jose. Apple lawyers are maintaining in a California court case that online journalists are not “legitimate members of the press” and not entitled to the same legal protection as traditional journalists.

Like that fruity computer behemoth, Matt Drudge and his then-affiliate, AOL, were fielding similar questions in 1998. When Matt was sued for $30 million for posting a storythat Sidney Blumenthal had a history of spousal abuse, courts initially ruled that he was not a journalist. Blumenthal dropped the case before it was settled, but AOL was cleared of liability

One disturbing ramification of the status of online journalists is that while they may get no respect legally or mediawise, they can be vulnerable to plagiarism from employees of recognized news outlets. A blogger’s material can be “inappropriately appropriated” by a professional journalist whose boss has more money and resources to fight the underdog in court — or hire someone to spin bad PR.

To be fair, I do not know what really happened in the Exhibit A I’m linking to (The IJC blogger’s word against The New York Observer), but the room for abuse is unsettling. I mean, it’s nice and all to think a respected reporter is mining this space or yours for potential stories, but not all will give credit where credit is due.

Unfortunately, this is one of those postings where I simply have to make my point in the few paragraphs I have time for. We “illegits” have day jobs, you know.

My baby was born late last Thursday night. Needless to say, I’m pretty busy with that. Mom, baby, and I are all doing fine. More later…

Your hosts are preoccupied this week with holidays and life cycle events and suchlike. Stay tuned and try to behave yourselves in the meantime…we’ll be right with you…

Today Drudge is posting Variety’s report that New York Times is dropping its gossip column in the aftermath of the Jared Paul Stern scandal at New York Post’s Page Six.

I’ve always taken exception to the claim that Matt Drudge is a gossipmonger. His position has always been that the mainstream media have occasionally let us down in terms of accurate, unbiased news coverage. I myself have always said that a publication that posts its own gossip column is in no position to lecture me or Drudge about his legitimacy. I say this knowing fully well that Matt himself reads and links to gossip columns, and probably always will.

Ironically, I stumbled upon a fascinating book by Page Six’s Paula Froelich, It!,,in which she tells point blank how the gossip industry works. No mention of cool bribes, but basically mention in a column like hers is a “quid pro quo” game. She’ll run an item about you or your client if you can offer a juicy tidbit on someone else that can’t be disproven. Of course, seeing someone’s name in print “legitimizes” them, right? I won’t get into my own lecture on subconscious legitimization, but despite my dislike for what she does, It is a surprisingly good book and I’m not above checking it out in the library. I’d describe it as more or less PR advice that has appeared elsewhere in books like Guerilla PR, but the stories and insights make it worth the time investment. I’ve never been interested in Paris Hilton other than as a PR case study, and I’d seen silly items on her in places like New York long before her “video” came out. What I didn’t know was that her mother had been pushing her publicity since she and her sister were teenagers: “Kathy Hilton…(worked) to get them invited to all the right parties, calling 35 times in one day to get them into the Golden Globes. Kathy always refused to take no for an answer, known to take gossip columnists out for dinner when they started getting a little catty about them… ” I could say more about the relationship between gossips and publicists, but that’s for another blog.

The point of all this is digression is that a machine processes and spits out the “news” you read on Page Six, Rush & Mulloy, and the about-to-be-defunct Boldface Names. At least the questionable items on the Drudge Report are newsworthy, and not the product of a media hiearchy nor tainted by office or industry politics. (Large blogs like the ones owned by Gawker Media aren’t immune to that, not to single them out.) For all the Drudge Report’s limitations, at least I know that Matt’s reports are tainted only by him.

In my humble opinion.

If you notice this site loading a bit slowly, I’m aware of the problem and working on a solution. It’s so difficult to find a web hosting provider that maintains good performance over time. Inevitably, they oversell a server and slowdowns start happening.

*Update 4/27/06 - Moved this site to a new server and things should be OK now.