The Drudge Report, an Internet web site created by Matt
Drudge, began in 1996, and was delivered by e-mail and
by America Online before finding its primary home at
www.drudgereport.com. After 1998, a banner headline
usually anchored the page, focusing on the top news of the
moment. Below the banner were dozens of secondary headlines that usually linked to news stories from web sites of
news organizations around the world. The stories linked
from the page were as diverse as any newspaper, touching
on politics, breaking news, crime and celebrity gossip. The
site also linked to dozens of newspapers and columnists.
Drudge and his employees updated the site dozens of times
each day.
By 2006, Drudge was reporting twelve million hits a
day on his site. A study by Comscore found that during the
first three months of 2005, the site had 2.3 million unique
visitors who visited an average of 19.5 times. The New York
Times reported that on election night in 2004, more people
logged onto the Drudge Report than its own web site. The
Drudge Report is often cited as the most well-read blog in
the United States.
Matt Drudge was born on October 27, 1966, and grew
in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he fell in love with journalism while delivering papers for the Washington Star.
After working a variety of odd jobs in California, Drudge
launched his Drudge Report from a basement apartment in
Hollywood. In his early days, he often found news from
entertainment sources, and even admitted to digging in the
trash to find Nielson ratings that he would be the first to
report. Drudge developed a reputation for being right, and
first, just enough to earn a regular following of readers. In
his autobiography, he says he was the first to name Bob
Dole’s vice-presidential nominee in 1996 (“a source close
to Dole called from a houseboat anchored off San Diego”);
first to report Jerry Seinfeld would ask for a million dollars
a week or leave his show (“based on a tape recording of
Seinfeld’s rant leaked to Drudge”); and first to report the
merger of Microsoft and NBC (after someone overheard a
network executive’s conversation in an elevator).
Drudge’s biggest scoop came on Saturday, January 17,
1998, when he reported that Newsweek magazine held
a story alleging President Bill Clinton had an affair with
White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Over the next four
days, Drudge continued to dole out persistent updates that proved to be accurate; and readers, journalists, and political
insiders swarmed to his web site. On Sunday, January 18,
Drudge reported Lewinsky had been subpoenaed to give
a deposition in the Paula Jones case and he posted Lewinsky’s resume. On Monday, Drudge reported news of an
affidavit Lewinsky submitted denying any “sexual relationship with President Clinton” and reported that NBC News
had obtained a copy of the affidavit. On Tuesday, Drudge
reported that Ken Starr, the independent counsel probing
the case, was investigating obstruction charges against the
president after investigators obtained “intimate taped conversations” of Lewinsky discussing details of her alleged
sexual relationship with Clinton. All were bone fide Drudge
scoops. On Wednesday, January 21, Drudge reported another
bombshell: Lewinsky kept a “garment with Clinton’s dried
semen on it.” The next day, Drudge appeared live on NBC’s
Today show, reporting his scoop on a program that could
not confirm the details on its own.
By Wednesday, January 21, the mainstream media finally
caught up to Drudge. And in a business that values being
first, Matt Drudge established himself as a new player in
political journalism. As his memoir makes clear, he did as
many reporters do everyday: he worked the phones, tracked
down multiple sources, and received tips based on his original reporting that advanced the story.
Drudge’s performance in covering the Lewinsky story
earned him both scorn and accolades. Some media analysts
decried the loss of editors as gatekeepers. Others criticized
Drudge’s conservative political leanings. He’s also made
several high-profile mistakes. One of his biggest came
during the 2004 presidential election when he erroneously
reported that Democratic candidate John Kerry had an
affair with an intern.
Drudge was sued for libel in 1997 in a case that raised
several potentially groundbreaking legal issues, including
whether online speech should be held to a different standard for libel than print publications and just who in cyberspace is considered a publisher under the law. The lawsuit
was the result of a story Drudge posted on August 10, 1997,
in which he reported that “one influential Republican, who
demanded anonymity,” claimed court records alleged that
Sidney Blumenthal, who was to begin work as a White
House aide the next day, had beaten his wife. Within a day,
Drudge retracted the story and apologized. Blumenthal filed
a $30 million defamation lawsuit against Drudge. Howard
Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media reporter, called the suit
“potentially ruinous” and concluded Drudge “doesn’t have
a terribly strong legal defense.” Blumenthal also issued subpoenas to find the identities of Drudge’s sources, raising for
the first time the question of whether Drudge would qualify
as a journalist under a myriad of reporter’s shield laws.
After four years of meandering through the courts, Blumenthal dropped the lawsuit and even reimbursed Drudge’s
attorney for travel costs. Drudge declared victory for the
cyber-journalist once again.
Drudge operates in a new medium with different rules,
where anyone with motivation and a web site can become
a disseminator of news. Some point to the lack of editorial
oversight or any ethical cannon of fairness to suggest that
Drudge is a threat to journalistic standards. But Drudge is
a pioneer in online journalism and political blogging. He
says transparency is the greatest strength for this new breed
of journalism.
“Everything I print from my apartment, everything I
publish I believe to be true and accurate. I put my name
on every single thing I write,” Drudge told the National
Press Club in 1998. “I’ll make mistakes. I’ll retract them if
I have to; apologize for it; try to make it right. But as I’ve
pointed out, the main organizations in this country have
let us down every once in a while and end up in trouble
with editors. So I don’t maintain that an editor is salvation. There won’t be editors in the future with the Internet
world, with citizen reporting just by the nature of it. That
doesn’t scare me.”
Further Reading
Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D.C. Cir. 1998).
Davis, Lanny J. Truth to Tell. New York: The Free Press, 1999.
Drudge, Matt. Drudge Manifesto. New York: New American
Library, 2000.
Godwin, Mike. “The Drudge Retort: Is Matt Drudge Guilty of
Libel?” Reason, February 1998.
Grossman, Lawrence K. “Spot News: The Press and the Dress,”
Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1998.
Isikoff, Michael. Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story. New
York: Crown Publishers, 1999.
Kurtz, Howard. “Blumenthals Get Apology, Plan Lawsuit,” The
Washington Post, August 12, 1997.
Kurtz, Howard. “Clinton Aide Settles Libel Suit Against Matt
Drudge – at a Cost,” Washington Post, May 2, 2001.
Kurtz, Howard. “Clinton Scoop So Hot It Melted,” The Washington Post, January 2, 1998.
Kurtz, Howard. “Cyber-Libel and the Web Gossip-Monger,” The
Washington Post, August 15, 1997.
O’Neil, Robert M. “The Drudge Case: A Look at Issues in Cyberspace Defamation,” Washington Law Review, July 1998.
Sullivan, Andrew. “Scoop,” The New Republic, October 30,
2000.
Toobin, Jeffrey. A Vast Conspiracy. New York: Random House,
1999.
Jason M. Shepard