Ah, white-knighting. The favorite activity of reporters trying to be edgy or politicians trying to be benevolent. Which is great: currently Obama is white-knighting Lieberman, while the Clintons are trolling him. Internet happenings in real life!
But one person who doesn't need any heroic gestures made on his behalf? Matt Drudge. People have been calling for his head since the conception of his website back during the Lewinsky scandal, and the fact that it's still trooping along, despite, or perhaps because of, Obama's victory should be proof enough that the man isn't going anywhere.
But Jack Shafer, he of the DNC party-pooping brigade, thinks that it's of utmost importance to specificly define what makes Drudge Report so necessary, despite the fact that he most likely disagrees with 99% of what is written on the conservative site.
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One day after we questioned the lack of conservative media outrage about an attack on a McCain supporter in Manhattan, the flagging Matt Drudge is going ALL CAPS about the alleged "mutilation" of a McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania. THE KING MUCKRAKER IS BACK, BABY!!!!!
Has Matt Drudge learned his lesson? After being excoriated yesterday for wrongly assuming he could maintain his agenda-setting sway in the press that he's enjoyed for the past decade, Drudge today seems to be jumping on the bandwagon in predicting a momentous Obama victory. Here's the current Drudge Report homepage. It's as much an acknowledgment that Drudge's candidate, McCain, is likely to lose as it is an admission that his talking points are no longer everybody else's.
Then again, Drudge did link to a freakin' Zogby poll, and those things are basically garbage.
Matt Drudge is sort of stuck in a weird place in time right now: four years ago he was able to sway MSM stories with the spin on his site, with his Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that derailed the Kerry campaign. And a lot of conservatives, and (non-conservatives!) still go to the "Republican Huffington Post" to hear how one of the big new media outlets is calling the presidential race.
But now that it's obvious to even the most loyal McCain supporters that their candidate is trailing behind in the polls, how does a guy like Matt Drudge both accurately report the facts while creating his own narrative?
Is it even possible for Matt Drudge to remain relevant after the credit crisis boosted Obama so far ahead in the polls that there seems to be no turning back?
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Sometime last night, link factory and cable news talking point shaper Matt Drudge posted a link to an article about Gwen Ifill, the PBS vet and broken legged moderator of tomorrow's VP debate, claiming she was coming out with a pro-Obama book on Inauguration Day. If true, an obvious favoring of Obama could jeopardize Ifill's plans for tomorrow night's session, since moderators are supposed to remain objective; any harsh questions aimed at Palin could then "justly" be labeled by the right wing as unfair and bias.
Except Drudge, to be sure, is not the nonpartisan link factory Fox News would have you believe. So it makes sense that the news outlet he linked to for the story would be the right-wing zealot website WorldNetDaily, a place where, much like Drudge, ordinary news topics get twisted ever so slightly to become slanted in such a way that the reader would be forgiven for realizing he bought into the spin. (For instance, an article about how Americans can relate to Obama is headlined, "Do Americans have anything in common with Obama?" See the twist?)
So is Ifill's book even about Obama? And if it is, is it really pro-Obama? You can take a guess. CONTINUED »
Backtracking off previous backtracking, the International Olympic Committee says it never reached a deal with China to permit Internet filtering, and says all along it's insisted there must be unrestricted access to the web just as there was in previous host cities. They're blaming the mix up on a miscommunication; IOC president Jacques Rogge made his statement in English, which isn't his first language. So now that the IOC's position on censorship has been cleared up, where does the media's Internet access stand? CONTINUED »
Like a good tabloid photo editor, Matt Drudge has a way of sniffing out the best part of a story, turning a rather mundane news report into a pull-quoted breaking bulletin that rockets around the press corps in minutes. That's one reason WaPo's Chris Cillizza gives for the influence of The Drudge Report. The second explanation? That everybody in the media is reading him, which gives Drudge one of the most influential, some might say "elite," readerships around.
But none of that explains the real reason why Drudge exerts so much influence in what's considered news. CONTINUED »
Fortune editor-at-large Richard Siklos has exactly zero new things to say about Drudge: "There is no Drudge video section, no subsidiary sections of the report (lifestyle, sports, and so forth) and no tricky pop-up windows to keep visitors on the site there rather than sending them elsewhere on the web. In short there is very little that looks like it was done for many of those "-ization" words that are so de rigueur in webland, - optimization and monetization. All Drudge produces is a single page, updated a few dozen times every day by Drudge personally - he has purportedly not missed a day since he launched the site-with the help of a part-time associate or two." [Fortune]
Sure, there are some links up top about Hillary and Obama going at each other, but on this day, when the future of the Democratic party, and perhaps the White House, is literally on the line, Matt Drudge's lead story is this.
Naturally, the Katie Couric-hating Matt Drudge went with this dramatic photo for his story about CBS's maybe-deal with CNN. But with so many options to choose from, it'd be a shame to let fellow Couric bashers go without the news kingpin's resources. So what could have been some of his other options?
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Is Arianna Huffington's group blog getting more traffic than the indefatigable Matt Drudge? Third-party sources who are often completely off base say yes! Nielsen Online says HuffPo snagged 3.7 millino unique visitors in February, to Drudge's mere 3.4m. comScore's numbers are tinier than Nielsen's, but report the same trend: HuffPo's 2.3m to Drudge's 1.6m. Maybe Bill O'Reilly's ambush tactics are working in her favor? [Boomtown]
The blogs are in a tizzy over photos like these of recent troop withdrawal Prince Harry, who spent 10 weeks in Afghanistan only to be forced home by Matt Drudge's "exclusive" item that trumped the British press' embargo. In exchange for keeping quiet, the UK papers were promised access to be used after his safe return home.
Now that he's back early, he's been quickly reduced to beefcake status. Where he belonged. CONTINUED »
DRUDGE RETORT It's hard to tell whether Variety's Brian Lowry is thanking or begrudging those times when he gets linked on Drudge Report. But either way, your hate mail might be better received if only you were polite when calling him an elitist media snob liberal. [Variety]
If you find the Drudge Report boring, you probably won’t find Matt Drudge’s interview with Sky TV in England any more interesting. The interview has gems like "I find myself updating hundreds of times a day. Hundreds of times a day!” and “You have to really read a lot of varied sources."
Still, it’s always nice to see Matt Drudge fedora-less every once in a while.
Even without a face to face interview, New York Magazine still manages to profile internet ace Matt Drudge this week with a very familiar lede.
In lieu of speaking with him, Philip Weiss talks to everyone surrounding him, learning Drudge began to lose his hair in high school, used to deliver the Washington Star and that back then, he was the one who was had trouble reaching people. When he was 15, he was arrested for making “annoying phone calls to a girl.”
Since then, Drudge has been on the straight shot to sanity.
At his $1 million-plus condo in Miami's Four Seasons hotel, Drudge ignores even a "note slipped under his door by the concierge … [and] numerous phone calls and e-mails requesting an interview." He also doesn't want your link suggestions, ya pageview hopefuls. [LAT]
One – of many, we'll assume – examples of unfortunate advertising attached to today's Upper East Side plane crash story. Leave it to the Drudge Report, however, to bring us the most disturbing so quickly.
We almost feel like this should be set up as a joke. Like, "what happens when Commies get hot?" or something. And even though it's been awhile since we've drudged up the Drudge-isms that make the world go round, this particular headline today was just too much to let go.
See, that's just what happens when you live a country like China, where they base their government on ideas of equal access and shared land. No private Hamptons property. It's just ridiculous.
Chinese water torture [Daily Mail via Drudge Report]
Oh Matt Drudge. What ever are we going to do with you?
Yes, we always knew you were gay, honey. But even we didn't know you were this flaming.
It's been at least a week since we've muttered "oh, Drudgie" under our tequila soaked breaths. But today, not even the lack of shit in a hotel bed can stop us from laughing at Matt Drudge's classic choice of photos to depict his stories.
Some may say he does this kind of ridiculous nonsense on purpose. We don't claim we'll ever really know how the mysterious mind of Drudge works. But we like to think if that is the case, that he's doing it just for us.
Bill Gates makes cryptic remark on Internet rights to China's Hu [Reuters via Druge Report]
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