Matt Drudge: The Man and the Myth--Feb. 2006

Matt Drudge: The Man and the Myth

Matt Drudge had a nonescript childhood as an only child and barely graduated high school at a less-than-impressive 341 out of 355 students. His exasperated mother only sent him to public school after he failed Hebrew school and Bar Mitzvah.

“Secular school- i.e., sexular school- was like jail to me,” Drudge says.

Upon graduation, he held a swing shift position at 7-Eleven. “More than adequate curriculum vitae for that,” he notes.

Not exactly a candidate for “Most Likely to Succeed,” indeed.

Meet Mr. Drudge, media innovator of the 21^st century and Internet news personality. He breaks stories before others even get their hands on them. He is the creator of the Drudge Report website and was the first to break the news of President Bill Clinton’s infidelity tryst with Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent scandal in 1998. His rise to fame is all mapped out in the Drudge Manifesto, a scathing, irreverent chronicle on how he turned modern media on its’ ear and basically started a revolution in how we get our news.

Drudge actually started his assault on the journalism establishment as a youngster growing up in the Washington, D.C. area. “I’d look up longingly at the Washington Post newsroom walking the streets, knowing I’d never get in. I didn’t attend the right schools. In fact, I never enjoyed any school.” As a junior high school student he held a job delivering the now-defunct Washington Star. He often neglected to reach every subscriber on his route because “I would play editor. I noticed how their lead story was not really the lead story…how the hottest news and best reporting was buried on the inside pages and the best reporting was secluded in the rear sections when it should have been at the beginning. I’d rewrite my own headlines for an audience of one…I just knew I’d do it better if I was in charge.”

Drudge eventually forsook his penchant for reading newspapers brought into the store hot off the press at his all-night 7-Eleven gig and moved to Hollywood, “the part they’re always promising the clean up and never do.” Finagling his way into a clerk job at CBS Studios, he suddenly had what he always dreamed of: access to insiders’ news, gossip and hush-hush stories. This was the beginning of the inspiration for the Drudge Report, which he created using a few email addresses, which turned into a few hundred.

His website, www.drudgereport.com, soon would take off after a series of reports in which he beat the mainstream media by being the first to report the story. Drudge first got national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole’s running mate in that year’s presidential election. His site was the first outlet to break the “Zippergate” Clinton sex scandal. Today, his site receives millions of page views per day and is still growing.

To keep the site updated, he reportedly monitors several news channels and number of websites on several computers in his home office.

Drudge’s success in being a maverick news hawk is simple: He can do what he wants. He has no editor and he is his own boss. What makes his stories so popular is that they are exactly as he envisioned as a kid poring over the Star headlines: news stripped to the bone. The stories and news you find on his site are raw news with no additives or preservatives.

Virtually every newsroom across the country rewrites, spins, slants, softens and purifies the news it receives to the point to where the news item in question is but a caricature of what was the actual message.

Drudge has built his medium without propaganda or mainstream fanfare. He has over seven million readers a month. He may well be the antidote to the controlled, monopolized, biased information we receive from corporate monoliths on a daily basis, who control and operate most of America’s major media outlets.

It is not surprising, then that many in mass media industry do not agree with the things Drudge has said and one on his website to upstage the establishment. It is a fact that many in the conventional journalism field harbor an extreme dislike for Drudge, who owes his success strictly based on the advent of the Internet. He is the only person ever sued by the White House. Aide Sidney Blumenthal took him to the mat for a $30 million suit after being exposed on a Drudgian story of spousal abuse, which he vehemently denied. The case was settled before trial.

A federal judge noted in a judgment on libel lawsuit, which was in Drudge’s favor, that Drudge is not a “reporter, a journalist, or a news gatherer.” He has been reviled for his publishing of personal attacks, suggestions and private information, such as the Monica Lewinsky and Blumenthal reports.

However one thing that cannot be summarily dismissed is Drudge’s impact on the mass media culture and his total disregard for the “old boy’s club” of newsroom etiquette.

On any given day, a typical major metropolitan newspaper throws out twice as many stories as they actually publish. Such selectivity will very soon become a thing of the past as the Drudgian empire spawns new outlaw journalist. New ideas and concepts have always have been ridiculed and rendered unpopular by those seeking to maintain the status quo, and the Forth Estate is no different. In Manifesto, Drudge strips bare conventional press and what it chooses to report.

The future of journalism will belong to the internet predators, bloggers and people who dedicate themselves to digging up stories before the networks can get to it. Drudge is clearly devoted to exposing at every given opportunity the lazy and cliquish ways of the mass media in the conventional world, which no doubt fuels the ire of his enemies.

For the first time in the history of communication and the spoken word, one is not required to live in a corporate newsroom to gain access instant information, Drudge notes. Anyone can have their newsroom in a living room or bedroom with a modem, a phone jack, and an inexpensive computer. Drudge shows how to do it in Manifesto.

As predicted, six years after publishing his autobiography-slash-Chinese fire drill hit and run style of journalism guide, the Net is gradually replacing contemporary media at an alarming pace. His writing style, as would befit his image, is quick, witty and in-your-face. Purists will detest his unconventional email style of punctuation, prose and his cryptic messages throughout the book, but it is an accurate reflection of his persona. It is raw, uncut, and no-frills.

Definitely one of those stories where the little guy beats the big guy. Drudge has gone toe-to-toe with corrupt arrogant politicians, snobby journalists who believe their word is the only word that counts, and the sordid corporate underside to mass media. He has won, and continues to win with his penchant for true news coverage, not neutered tripe.