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Friday, July 20, 2007


Tiny Morsel of Hearsay: For What It’s Worth

I actually communicated with the friend of mine who ended up on the Drudge Report awhile back. To confirm the answers I’ve already given out, Matt Drudge actually has made an effort to do his own news research and generate original material, even from potentially hostile sources. Drudge did leave at least one message for my friend (who doesn’t appear any more endeared toward him now than during his 15 minutes of infamy.) 

My curiosity had been piqued a bit because Drudge had claimed in his 1998 National Press Club speech that he had knocked on Monica Lewinsky’s door during the Clinton scandal, but that reference was curiously eliminated from the speech transcript that appeared in his book, Drudge Manifesto

Anyway…just FYI, I guesss.

  by RegoPark - 3:47 pm        Comments (4) »


Sunday, July 8, 2007


Drudge Connections

For your next dose of new media dialogue, check out an interview down Pajamas Media-way with Matt’s longtime co-poster Andrew Breitbart (now come into his own at Breitbart TV ).

Thanks for all your great feedback on the first incarnation of my book trailer, both in this space and elsewhere. A 60-second spot from an entirely different angle will be posted this week, and I’ll be teasing anybody interested (in a good way) with videos tailored at different market segments.

  by RegoPark - 3:46 pm        Comments (1) »


Sunday, July 1, 2007


Exclusive World Premiere….The Book’s Trailer

For your viewing pleasure is the world’s latest media innovation…

A trailer for a BOOK?  A video for a NOVEL?  Why the hell not?  This is your first available peek at Names Have Been Changed, the explosive new novel inspired and informed by three years of research on Matt Drudge, citizen journalism, new media, PR, Miami-Dade, and a host of other things not quite relevant.

Humor us!  Tell us what you think…of the video, the concept, the theme…the sound, the smells…

Aired to the public for a limited time only, it’s the first of several versions and my first attempt ever at movie editing.  Save for about thirty seconds of stock video, it’s composed entirely of stills (photographed on location in Miami Beach and Washington, DC.)  A movie version will follow.  As Drudge would say, “Developing…”

View it here. 

P.S. Let me make this clear, folks — this manuscript is not yet published and not yet available.  When the time comes, of course all that info will be easily accessible.

 

  by RegoPark - 9:34 am        Comments (2) »


Monday, June 25, 2007


The Sounds of Siren: Murdoch Buying the Wall Street Journal

And now the Drudge Alert has an actual sound effect…yep, a bullhorn on-air to herald the announcement that Rupert Murdoch is finalizing terms to purchase the Wall Street Journal.

If you didn’t catch Matt’s warm-up show on WABC last night, do catch it on Drudge Radio Archives.  The acquisition, he argues, will be great for Hillary Clinton and the paper will be “hot”.  He actually gave good insight on the Murdoch political paradox, the Fairness Doctrine, the theater of radio and other topics.  Drudge can be quite lucid when he wants to be, and I don’t steer people toward a particular archived radio episode unless it’s something good.

P.S. Don’t go looking for a Wall Street Journal link on the Drudge Report…at least not as long as the paper charges for content.

  by RegoPark - 1:30 am        Comments (0) »


Friday, June 15, 2007


Drudge Park, Maryland

On the multi-city vacation I’m currently blogging from, I actually had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in and around Takoma Park, the Maryland ‘burb right outside DC where Drudge grew up (and from where he played hookey walking the streets of Washington, looking longingly up at the seats of media power “knowing (I’d) never get in…” Before you say “pilgrimage”, let me tell you that it was convenient to the Washington Metro and BWI and the next leg of my open-jaw tour. 

Relevant insights later.

We’ve gotten some great questions and comments in the past few weeks, so keep them coming…just be patient for a response. Drudge’s Law (or Murphy’s Law, or Morrissette’s Law) dictates that relevant news will break when I’m unavailable to comment on here.

Once I’m back home, I’ll post a much overdue addition to FAQs on Drudge.

  by RegoPark - 3:57 pm        Comments (0) »


Sunday, June 3, 2007


Dirty Little Dirty-Dirty: Is Drudge Fudging His Stats? Part Eighteen

(The following is a response I have just posted to SEM Report Card. This is one of those times where I worry I’ll be dismissed as a Drudge cheerleader.   But because I have worked in media, I felt a prompt and thorough rejoinder was in order.) 

http://www.semreportcard.com/the-drudge-reports-dirty-little-secret-criminal-or-just-unethical/ 

You are absolutely correct that the offered site stats should not be taken at face value.  Nor would I would put it absolutely past Matt Drudge to fudge-stimate figures. That said, after researching and monitoring Drudge’s press and career for a few years, I haven’t really “caught” Drudge violating any moral absolutes…no matter how troubling or controversial some of his journalistic practices may be.  

1.      This article’s title is based on a logical fallacy: the false dilemma that either Matt Drudge is breaking the law or he’s unethical.  Let’s first determine how much control an Intermedia client (Drudge) has, how much he’s exercising, and what he COULD do if he wanted to eliminate all appearance of impropriety. 

2.      When I’ve been contacted by the press for insight on Matt Drudge, I’ve encouraged them to scrutinize Intermarket’s role in the Drudge Report logistics.  Are we to suppose that a new media third party operates its business on the honor system, taking client-provided statistics without independently gauging them?  As someone who has worked for years in advertising and PR (including media buying), I doubt that Intermarkets or professionals in any communications-related industry are victims of Drudge chicanery.  That doesn’t mean I think Intermarkets is guilty of anything.  They are responsible to their advertising clients, so they communicate to their publics with information that those publics find relevant.  There are different players in this game with different business aims. They are not responsible for one another.  We need to shake the paradigm that the public face behind the Drudge Report manages, is directly responsible for, and aware of, the ad presentation we see and his vendors’ promotional attempts.  

3.      From the standpoint of DR advertisers, the currently stats are reliable where it counts the most: we have at least a sense of the volume of visitors who are spending time on the site, exposed to the advertisers’ messages.  Even if a DR reader is following or even held up by a link or a refresh-in-progress, that visitor is spending the “quality time” that gives DR ad slots or interstitials much of their value.  When Intermarkets promotes the Drudge Report in the referenced press release, they are really targeting their own audience…with information relevant to their specific goals.  Let’s face it: media is an evolving, and sometimes muddy, science.  You can’t learn fixed formulas in a college advertising class and assume you’ve got all the skills you’ll ever need to accurately assess website traffic. 

4.      The Daily Reckoning/Economic Policy Monitor link cites Alexa as its source. I don’t accept Alexa as a reliable measure of web traffic, whether it benefits Drudge or not. Are there other stats available or a more accurate way of gauging web traffic?  Is there a standard we can all agree on? 


5.      What is the uncited source about the Drudge Report billing advertisers by the number of ad impressions?  If we’re going to call Matt Drudge on ethics, we need to be more concrete and scrupulous than he is.  Don’t just say “a source informs me…” Just because he plays those games doesn’t mean it behooves his critics to. 

6.      Let’s be clear about assigning responsibility to the right person.  Intermarkets issued the latest press release regarding DR’s traffic numbers.  Intermarkets markets itself; Matt Drudge is seldom proactive about self-promotion at this stage in his career.  He is certainly not responsible for writing Intermarket’s press copy and probably didn’t formally approve those press materials… nor would he have control over that site’s web copy.  Drudge mostly limits “reports’ on his traffic stats when there is a historical traffic high, in the same way he occasionally posts squibs on the site’s anniversary and other milestones. 

7.      The “Drudge Report team” is one individual, Matt Drudge, who, at different times in his career, has worked 8 to 14 hours a day.  He has had only one peripherally involved assistant, who has put in roughly 26 hours a week and who now has his own site (breitbart.com).  Then there are the vendors he outsources to keep his site running and his business going.  Drudge is sloppy; he is impatient: he doesn’t mess with anything he doesn’t have time for. He told the Miami Herald in 2003, “I’m probably the worst marketer out there…I just don’t care. I put my energy into the site.”  From all the tangible press contacts I’ve found in the three years I’ve researched Matt Drudge and monitored his coverage, this is the attitude he uniformly projects.  He doesn’t micromanage.  He wants his business to be as simple as possible so he can go after his next news fix. 

8.      Drudge’s linking practices and siren alerts existed long before he began to carry advertising in 1999. They are the entire raison d’etre of his website, which by my calculation operated for at least four years without ad revenue. (I haven’t pinpointed the exact date when the 1994-launched e-mail subscription transitioned into an independent web presence).  The siren alerts are only occasional, and one of the cheap effects on a very rudimentary web format (he utilized an old version of Netscape).  Were he truly motivated by marketing, he would “alarm” us with greater frequency.  

9.      I do want to address the “refresh” controversy here.  The nature of his site dictates that it be constantly updated.  Drudge may not need “new” stats, but he does need constantly new headlines and information to remain current.  Setting anything but the most aggressive refresh mode available is counterintuitive. 

10.  Think a bit about the word choice: Drudge “already command(s) an overwhelming audience size, generating a massive amount of page views naturally!”  Are you sure we really know what Drudge’s intentions are and whether the left hand knows what the right hand is doing?, Who, in fact, are the suspects in this case? 

11.  Finally, the most important question of all: if you were a basically honest webmaster in Matt Drudge’s position, what would you do?  What could you do?  What should you do in terms of quantifying web visit statistics, and what are the minimal moral expectations should Drudge readers and advertisers have, knowing all the facts?  I would rather that marketing and media specialists present facts within the area of your expertise and not jump to conclusions about intentions they cannot know or measure.  I think that there is more to this picture than meets the eye.  

 

  by RegoPark - 8:01 pm        Comments (1) »


Sunday, May 27, 2007


Drudge’s May 13 Response to Salon’s “Matt Drudge Primary”

I know it’s late, but for what it’s worth, as there is numerous coverage on the story-torial and nothing on his end.  I myself missed it the first time, a sudden conversational turn in the final hour of Drudge’s Sunday night broadcast…meaning that I had not even heard this at the time of my previous post.  While it’s not much different than what I expected, I wanted to be careful not to appear to speak for him or rush too soon to dismiss his connection with Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Boy, this thing goes on and on…Well, I guess it’s my world and they just live in it…You know, why are they picking on me? You think about it, it’s just one guy, one and a half guys…Andrew does the afternoon shift. And some other hours sometimes, what’s the big deal? (Chuckling) They did this with Mark Halperin over at ABC News (Note: Halperin recently co-authored The Way to Win which featured a chapter on Matt Drudge with the controversial Cronkite analogy. In 1998, Halperin procured a press pass for Drudge to a White House Press Conference). “Oh, Matt Drudge is the Walter Cronkite of this era, and this is…oh, you’re the gatekeeper of the news…”  Get real, it only shows that they’re not doing their job.  If Salon was providing a provocative, you know, a display of news from around the Western world, I wouldn’t have to, you know, wake up at four in the morning to dazzle you. I mean, it wouldn’t be necessary. Really, sour grapes here. “Matt Drudge Primary.” “Oh…Oh, he’s in with the Mitt Romney crowd.” I never even met Mitt Romney! He sent me his book on the Olympics, he autographed it, it’s all one way, you don’t seem to understand, Salon!

Yeah, I get tips.  I get tips from all of them. Look, I was the first one to announce Hillary’s first quarter…fundraiser…The first one! Don’t …ask me how I got that, but I posted it.

Yeah, I go where the action is, yeah, I don’t personally want to see Hillary or Obama elected because they’re personally gonna take more money from me so yeah, I’m being selfish on that front. Obama, you know, said it himself…going to raise taxes. So I don’t…So what is this conspiracy they’re trying to say, you know, “Drudge is driving the news and we should really examine his contacts. How ridiculous. Most of my contacts — oh, yeah, and when something hot goes on Salon, you know, they pitch me to put something on Salon. “Please link to us.”  You know, I link to…the great columnist Camille Paglia, Professor Paglia out of Philadelphia. (Note: Paglia is a liberal Salon columnist who has appeared on Drudge’s radio show at least twice and whose books have been plugged on the Drudge Report.) I don’t need a heads up on that; I love linking to her! But I would always link to her. But they send me, Salon sends me other stuff. “Oh, would you be interested in this?”  New York magazine does the same thing, Los Angeles Times does it, they all do. Vanity Fair, oh, they’re the worst!  And then they wipe their hands clean of me and say “Oh, well, we don’t know anything about why he’s making…news.” You know why?  The early bird catches the worm.”

  by RegoPark - 9:51 pm        Comments (5) »


Monday, May 14, 2007


Chatter at the Salon Shop

Today’s Salon piece gets credit for everything but the paranoid subheading and citing Alexa statistics.  “History belongs to the people who write it,” Drudge once said in a 2003 interview.  “I would hate to read my obituary in Salon.”

But a Matt Drudge primary?  Okay with me…a summit in Miami Beach sure beats New Hampshire any day!

Salon        

  by RegoPark - 8:35 pm        Comments (6) »


Sunday, May 13, 2007


About Last Post…What Human Resources Are Necessary to Run the Drudge Report?

Just to make sure everyone’s clear on my M.O., let me elaborate on last post’s comment discussion. 

While, yes, it is Matt Drudge I blog about in this space, I don’t necessarily share his philosophy on what constitutes a legitimate source.  Most of my research is a by-product of a book project that’s recently been completed. With few exceptions, I have all of the procurable archive of Matt Drudge’s press coverage in my possession — along with those of individuals whose careers or lives have been touched by him (e.g. Michael Isikoff, David Brock, Jeannette Walls, Ann Coulter, Dan Mathews, Lucianne Goldberg).  I’ve copied them all onto a Word document in which his actual quotes are highlighted.  Because in my opinion, you can tell the most about an individual by what he or she volunteers to the press.  I generally compare and contrast different reporters’ accounts of the same incidents and put very little stock in paraphrasing of quotes or subjective assessments of a subject’s apartment layout or physical appearance. (As you can surmise, I’m a big fan of raw interviews and glean much of my notes from Drudge’s radio comments.)

For the purpose of this particular blog, I myself do not post anonymous tips on here or statements based solely on unconfirmed gossip. 

That said, Andrew Breitbart is the only person who has ever worked for the Drudge Report. In the early years of the site, outsourcing or hiring staff wasn’t an option. Aside from the original subscription revenue and money from a column with Wired and AOL, Drudge didn’t make serious money until around 1999 when the website began to carry advertising. Today, he has the time and the technology he didn’t have in the lean years when he was filing reports from pay phones. 

As far as Drudge paying or otherwise reimbursing sources: that’s within the realm of possibility. He stated in a 1998 Playboy interview that “checkbook journalism has broken some great stories” and that he’d theoretically be willing to pay a source, though he never had at that time).  It’s also outside the realm of probability.  Not only are his special reports infrequent now, but he given the massive amount of contact attempts daily and sources perfectly willing to leak something for free.

In any case, it will be interesting to see the ramifications Breitbart’s career will have on the Drudge Report.  Will we see links to Breitbart TV, and if so, how frequently? How great will be the proportion of Breitbart links — or new media links in general — to the rest of the daily news aggregate on Drudge? The two men have assumed two very different business models: Breitbart TV is affiliated with a parent company and employs staff.  The Drudge Report is a self-contained news aggregate that remains simple enough to be manageable.  More on this later. 

As I’ve said before, Breitbart left Matt’s employ for a few months in 2005 work for the newly launched Huffington Post — returning to Arianna Huffington, for whom he had previously worked as a researcher.  Now that he is well on his way to extend his brand (having co-authored a book, et al) his departure wouldn’t be surprising. There will come a point when going out on his own will be the logical stepping stone. It’s therefore natural that people would speculate about Andrew’s leaving, so that kind of insider gossip, if it’s intrinsically worth anything, carries little value in that context.  It’s more like “anticipatory hearsay”. Either he hasn’t said anything about leaving, or he’s already gone. 

What I know, right now, is that neither Drudge nor Breitbart is linking permanently to the other’s site (though a Breitbart story is currently on the Drudge page). But I’m not reading anything notable into that right now.  In my mind, the soap opera’s not so much the drama that may or may not be transpiring behind the scenes, but its impact on a simple site with the revenue and influence of a large media outlet.  Pay attention to the man behind the curtain!

  by RegoPark - 9:51 pm        Comments (7) »


Thursday, May 10, 2007


Drudge’s Right Hand Man Tries His Hand at….

http://www.breitbart.tv/index.php

Since he returned to Drudge in 2005 after a few months’ absence, there’s been a clearer demarcation between Andrew Breitbart’s contribution to Drudge Report and Matt’s.  First breitbart.com, now the new new media.  Whatever’s in store for the one and only Drudge employee ever, it should get interesting…

(P.S. I’ll get to the radio comment I alluded to last post…this week I’ve only a few minutes of online time and I really need to listen to the archives carefully before shooting my mouth off.)

  by RegoPark - 5:53 pm        Comments (3) »


Monday, May 7, 2007


Choices of the Mouth

On last night’s radio show, Drudge made an arguably controversial statement or two to which I need to listen again before addressing.  I think of it as more of a badly timed word choice than anything else, but the press could have a field day over it.  Check out Drudge Radio Archives as soon as the May 6 footage is up.

  by RegoPark - 2:50 pm        Comments (1) »


Tuesday, May 1, 2007


Science Fiction Double Feature…

Sci-fi not being my genre, I fall short of offering the most astute review this work deserves. but a recent novel gives a nod to the impact of the big D on the Information Age (and, to my enormous relief, bears no resemblance to the fiction project I just completed.)

David Louis Edelman’s debut depicts a news world where reporters and pundits (a.k.a. “drudges” are not beholden to colossal news corporations.  Infoquake makes the media the sole domain of independent journalists “with their own larger-than-life personalities and political agendas”.

“I wanted to tip my hat to Drudge in the novel,” Edelman states in last year’s press release. “When I wrote the first drafts…the Clinton impeachment scandal was in full bloom. Here was a private citizen armed with little more than a personal computer, and yet his inside reporting echoed to the highest levels of government…”

Barnes & Noble billed Infoquake the “Best Science Fiction Novel of 2006″. 

  by RegoPark - 9:02 pm        Comments (0) »


Monday, April 16, 2007


Life-Imitating-Drudge?

Those who love to scream and yell about Matt Drudge’s utter unimportance unwittingly extend the life of his brand better than I ever could or would want to.  I’ve found that the people who want to discuss him seriously take him far less seriously than those who just want him to disappear.  Maybe because I’ve grown weary of the conspiracy theories, maybe because my research/analysis of Drudge was for a specific purpose (my book), maybe because I’ve just spent so much time observing how Drudge reads and reacts to news, I think I’ve developed a sixth sense for how seriously he really takes a story and interprets it.

Undoubtedly, someone will have a Drudgelike reaction about the “possible” story Matt D. thinks will emerge within the next few months regarding Rufus Wainwright’s release of a song about “leaving America”. 

Before we all get up in arms about Drudge going after Wainwright, I maintain the same philosophy I’ve had since my early days of studying his career.  I simply don’t think that he deliberately distorts context.  I think he doesn’t understand it in the first place and gets caught up in his own emotional theater.  Rather than an alarmist, I find him more of an occasionally annoying drama king.

But while much of his comments are throwaway, I won’t refute their impact.  An insignificant story or comment often becomes significant when it appears in the Drudge Report…and someone offers as strong, or stronger, a reaction than Matt did in the first place.  In that sense our Drudge is a bit of a bull in a china shop — and like a three hundred pound bull, he can do almost anything he wants to.  Or perhaps he’s more of a big, clunky cow mooing through the primrose patterned Royal Doulton with a cumbersome bell that makes as much noise as the earthenware crashing around him…while the people left in his wake record the damage and examine the pathogens in the cow pat materials he left behind. 

It’s the detractors who not only helped make Drudge what he is, but also keep him relevant now that citizen journalism has lost its novelty and gained a modicum of respectability.  “The more they slime me,” he told Playboy last decade, “the more they make of me.”  The man who once stated in his tell-all biography that “no serious thought seemed to have entered (Drudge’s) head” now bases a career on documenting his crimes against humanity and journalism on Media Matters.  If you want him to stop jerking your pigtails — stop reacting to him!

(P.S. Matt Drudge is more likely, by the way, to leave the U.S. than Wainwright.  He has stated on-air that he’d go elsewhere were Hillary elected President because she would “tax the hell out of (his) bracket”.) 

  by RegoPark - 2:05 pm        Comments (0) »


Friday, April 6, 2007


A statement from Drudge’s publicist concerning Matt’s permanent post hosting “The View”

April Fools. (You DID read that last sentence of the previous entry, didn’t you?)

 

  by RegoPark - 3:13 pm        Comments (0) »


Wednesday, March 28, 2007


Matt Drudge to join The View next fall!

Just as I was getting over Drudge buying out Huffington Post, comes this from Women’s Weir Daily News Online:

(Four paragraphs down):

…Drudge will become the show’s first permanent male host after this summer’s broadcast hiatus.  View representatives declined comment on whether he will replace a current cast member or become a fifth regular.

The change will restore a balanced harmony to the Emmy Award-winning series, which has been littered with controversy and personality conflicts amongst the evolving host lineup.  Drudge offers media acumen to counter the “laywoman” perspective, as well as a more aggressive presence to match wits with O’Donnell and serve as a fatherly buffer between her and the sensitive Hasselbeck.

“The historic model (of four female hosts) has proven too volatile, and something needs to be done to restore brand equity,” Poisson-D’Avril added.

An insider tells WWDN that the hiring choice may stem from a favor from Walters to Arianna Huffington, who announced Monday that she would merge her Huffington Post with Drudge Report Omnimedia.

The Drudge camp confirms only that “Matt has agreed to be the guinea pig in the henhouse.”

“He looks forward to bonding with the ladies. It’s a forum where great minds can kick back, relax, and watch hell freeze over together,” said April Fools, Drudge spokesperson.  WWDN 

  by RegoPark - 11:34 pm        Comments (1) »




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