drudge blog

All day Sunday with this headline? Did you even watch this? Rage, really? Sometimes you’re a partisan foot soldier Matt. Get beyond the party line soundbite…

*****Update*****

I’m a bit better about this now. This was just a totally manufactured event by Fox, especially in the timing of the airing of it. It bugged me that Matt Drudge just took the bait and played right along…

Today’s Drudge Report shows Benedict with outflung arms and a somewhat distorted facial expression. Is the context intentionally distorted, is Matt being capricious, or is he somehow not cognisant of the fact that this shot comes from a celebration of the Mass?

Maybe the Pope photographs badly. Or maybe they just shot him on his bad side this week — literally and figuratively.

Matt Drudge is doing a nice job of honoring the 9-11 anniversary today. No main headline all day today, just this montage photo.

I can’t remember the last time Drudge used just a photo up top to illustrate a story. He’s probably done it, I just don’t recall when. If anyone remembers another time he did this, feel free to share.

For the past two weeks, I’ve lived the life of a zombie. I’m finally into the home stretch of finishing my book – that book about which I’ve been annoyingly cryptic for the past 18 months in this space (two years for you crossover readers from Drudge Forum). Well, sorry, I’m not saying much more until this manuscript is ready for exposure. But suffice to say that it’s been heavily fueled by research I’ve conducted on Matt Drudge, the Drudge Report legacy itself, and the growth and development of citizen journalism within the past 15 years.

Which means that I’ve spent normal waking hours submerged in sleep while I’ve been up all night, tapping away at the laptop. Let me explain that for the first few days, it worked really well to be up at night with no daylight, no phone calls, no daytime noise, nothing open for me to distract myself with errands. But since then, I’ve managed to spend 24/7 in a hypnagogic daze. Ohhhhhh yeah. I’m in the throes as I type right now. Even primed with a week’s supply of Wild Cherry Pepsi, Evita Peron is holding up better than I am at this hour in all her postmortem shellac-ing – and probably looking a tad better, too.

But thanks to a nifty AOL trick, I know that I’m not alone in cyberspace at this hour. Ever since I flashed Drudge a comment one Sunday night (which he invites viewers to do to his AIM address), the gods at America OnLine have registered him as my “buddy”. Since there is only one friend with whom I regularly IM, I know when I hear that creaking door sound that there’s a 50% chance it’s my new best friend, reporting for another shift at the Drudge Report.

I cannot tell you how unnerving it is to be aware that my good buddy Matt is online and working just as I am online and working on something that would get him online and working with a start if he weren’t already online and working. In my sleep-deprived state, it sometimes feels like he’s looking over my shoulder as I revise a manuscript he’s inspired. (Now I crank my laptop volume to zero and log online only for critical research.)

But then I made an observation: Matt Drudge not only keeps late hours, but definitely works around the clock. It’s true that at least for the 10-14 hours he claims to pull daily, his AOL is up and running. Sometimes the site’s clearly updated by him, sometimes by Andrew (Breitbart, his assistant). But there’s no discernible pattern in his man-hours. It seems during this past fortnight that Matt’s been logging on and off during my own long work stretches – and maintaining no more of a regular sleep schedule than I am (temporarily).

I bring this up not to encourage a floodgate of “junk” IMs from readers who think Matt Drudge ought to be their AIM buddy, too. For the hell of it, I made a log of the times he was online last week at the same time I was…and decided in the end not to share it in this space.

What would that make me, a modified version of a human spider? As much as he deplores the notion of his “manhood” visibly outlined in airport X-rays, methinks a privacy champion like Mattisyahu Drudge ain’t down with publicizing the hours of his AOL activity. Even if the lights are on and nobody’s online. Even if there’s no law on the books. Even though he’d be highly unlikely to notice, care, or pursue any conceivable recourse. Even if he’d do it himself. Nah, I don’t wanna go there.

But I do want to make some points here, a few conclusions to this experiment.

First, yet another key to Matt Drudge’s brand is his constant availability. He is a 24-hour service in a quite literal sense, willing and able to break or publicize a news story at ungodly hours. He is a human ticker tape machine. Of course, machines have limits and so does he, at some unknown point. But it’s this combination of immediacy (Internet connection) and flexibility (no family responsibilities or significant social engagements) that gives Matt and the Drudge Report its intrinsic value.

But some of his value as a news source is limited by saturation. He receives thousands of e-mails a day and who knows how many IMs. He is assisted only by a friend who acts as a researcher and Web surfer, not an administrative assistant. It is inevitable that Matt Drudge misses lots of tips and news because the Drudge Report lacks the manpower and infrastructure to screen incoming contacts. Which leads to my second conclusion:

I’ve been asked by a member of the mainstream media how to contact the elusive Mr. Drudge. My updated advice to anyone with a breaking news tip or a compelling need to contact Drudge would be to IM him in the wee hours of Tuesday through Friday, Eastern Standard Time. He may be online other times, but these are the hours he’s unlikely to be distracted with the radio show and time-sensitive work like surfing daily publication websites. He won’t, in other words, be “on deadline”. If he considers it news, he’ll act on it or perhaps flash you back. No guarantees, but this is your best bet.

But please, would-be tipsters of the world, use discretion here. Think of it as what it is – a contact with a member of the media. Approach him as a PR practitioner would – respect his time and ask yourself why he’d care about your info. The more encumbered Matt Drudge is with useless IMs and e-mails, the more elusive he will be to contacts with legitimate, useful, targeted information…and the less effective he’ll be for all of us.

Now that I’m off my “best practices in public relations” soapbox, I’m headed back to the bookwriting grindstone. (Matt, however, is offline and statistically likely to be in the middle of a good night’s snooze.)

Got a question about Matt Drudge or the Drudge Report? Interested in specifics from a new media, PR or marketing perspective? Still wondering who the hell we are and why we care so much? Post your Q in the comment box below and I’ll address it shortly…