In the Internet age, Drudge gets out front mainly by checking his e-mail and phone messages and finding that the world is full of people who have. Q: Yes, yes, but how does Drudge out-scoop all those highly compensated media characters?Ī: The journalism-school cliché about reporting is that shoe leather is what gets you the big stories. Frequenters of Drudge had long since learned that the grand-jury testimony left Clinton a wreck because there were more questions about Lewinsky than about Jones. And yet the Monica Lewinsky story was out there on Drudge’s web site at a time when the big-leaguers were dopily telling the world that Bill Clinton was in great shape because his grand-jury testimony on Paula Jones had gone so well. Big-league journalism organizations have hundreds or even thousands of reporters, scores of bureaus around the world, and access to superduper transmission technologies, while Matt Drudge has been living and working alone in a small apartment in Hollywood, with (on the evidence of his Manifesto) only a cat to talk to and only a cheap Packard Bell computer based on a 486 Intel chip-not even a Pentium. Also that the aforesaid Report (you get to it via is currently garnering 1.8 million hits a day.Ī: That is the marvel and the miracle. But what really kills them is that he often gets out there first with big breaking news stories. Major media honchos say the stuff on the site is just gossip, that Drudge does no reporting of his own, that he revels in dirt, that his material is unchecked. The Drudge Report is the Internet site where he lets fly with his version of the news. Q: You are positing that the media establishment disdains and calumniates Drudgism?Ī: It hates his guts, his persona, his trademark fedora, and the Drudge Report, possibly in that order. Just to be seen carrying the book is desirable, maybe even better than reading it.Ī: Because public possession maximizes the possibility of irking fans of Dan Rather, Frank Rich, and the Columbia Journalism Review. Q: Is it okay to read Matt Drudge? I mean okay for a serious person?Ī: It is more than okay. Frequently Asked Questions about this crazy best-seller and its author:

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