Ten Years Ago Today :
Drudge Ended the Reign of the Media Gate-keepers
On the night of January 17, 1998, Matt Drudge revealed that Newsweek editors had spiked a story about Bill Clinton and an intern named Monica Lewinsky. His story ended once and for all the gate-keeper ability, if not the mentality, of the mainstream media elite. He later said "We are all newsmen now."
It was denied. He was derided, attacked for his political views, and for working out of a $600-a-month rented Hollywood apartment. He was right. Today his website reputedly makes him $500,000-a-month and Drudge lives in an exclusive penthouse in Florida.
Love him or hate him, you can't dismiss him. Having been accused of emulating Drudge, all Guido will say is - "you bet!" As a fan and voracious reader, Guido is happy to say he has learnt a lot from the master - namely what matters if you want to be a news maker:
- Content. Original relevant content. Go get the story.
- Don't follow the herd. Have a clear unique online personality.
- Updating regularly is hard work, if you have nothing new to say, nobody will read you. Link to hot news at least.
Conventional journalists in the MSM have shifted from sneering to fearing, from deriding to envying. Technology means that any talented trouble maker with a modem can achieve Karl Marx's dream: ownership of the means of production and distribution. The internet requires no printing presses, delivery vans, distributors or news stands. No editorial restrictions, no proprietor, no once-a-day news cycle.Drudge has millions of readers and more influence than any other single newsmaker in America. Ironically his ability to direct reader traffic means he is now probably the biggest gate-keeper to conventional journalism today. The Pew Research Centre produced some data on the influence of news sources on the 2008 Presidential campaign. When they asked where Americans got their campaign information online, after the internet portals the New York Times website (6%) was the most cited source, confirming that it is after all the most influential paper in the free world. Second came the Drudge Report (3%), not bad for a three man operation (one of whom is based in London) and way ahead of the Washington Post website (1%). The twentieth century reign of the MSM gate-keepers is over.
Matt Drudge's greatest achievement was not exposing Bill Clinton, it was deposing the MSM. Guido salutes you Matt, you made him a newsman.
Matt Drudge's greatest achievement was not exposing Bill Clinton, it was deposing the MSM. Guido salutes you Matt, you made him a newsman.
22 comments:
He looks queer. Damn you for promoting him.
"GORDON Brown last night surrendered nearly £500,000 of pension rights as he slammed the lid on MPs’ pay rises.
The PM signed away his and future premiers’ lavish retirement deals."
See I always said he was stupid!!
If hain goes will you paint a picture on your car door like WW2 fighter pilots??
Yes, without Drudge, we wouldn't be talking endlessly about Peter Hain today, and politics would be much pooer because of it.....
Seconded. Hence we can now expect The Year The EU Tried It On Re Back Door Blog Regulation (c) 2008. They may even attempt to draw on the Chinese model including the tame portals ploy. Paranoid? Let's see.
The only trouble with your regular updates, Guido, is that comments get swept away before some people have had a chance to read them.
So, in the interests of continuity, I summarise my late post on the previous thread:
I too have become sickened by the leftie, right-on, agenda-driven, lotto-style commercialisation of once worthy charities. We have been totally subjugated by this crap, red noses and all.
On a related matter, a link to the TV debate between Leninslime, Boris and Paddick...
http://www.itvlocal.com/london/documentaries/?void=138708
Sadly, although Boris makes some headway, he feels unable to nail London's real problem: Too many people, too many conflicts in the holy name of diversity.
Particularly enjoyable is the manic rant by someone who looks very much like Jules Pipe, the Mayor of Hackney (people's republic of). With so much at stake in this election, all the cunt could manage is a repeated attack on Boris for a phone conversation he allegedly had with the chancer Darius Guppy, an old schoolmate, many years ago.
Is that really the best these Labour tits can do? Oh I forgot, they have never done any mischief in their entire, miserable collective lives.
Pass the bucket.
It's good to see the newspaper monopoly on news being shattered in the USA, but I'm not sure blogs will be able to hit those giddy heights in the UK for quite some time. Keep up the good work, though!
OK Guiders, got the message.
You are the Kevin Keegan of Blogging
without the propensity to walk off the job!!!!!!!!!
We'll forget about the Drudge claim that John Kerry was having an affair with an intern during the 2004 campaign, which wasn't true. Can't win em all, eh?
Peter Brookes has a good Hin cartoon in the Times today.
I know . My standards are slipping , but I can't live on a Page 3 diet forever.
Drudge is little more than a mouth piece for the far right of the Republican party. While he might have broken the Lewinsky scandal and other stories, the list of smears he has propagated for Karl Rove is far longer.
I hope this blog has higher standards.
@ Anon 9:05
No one should expect objectivity from any form of journalism.
Good grief - next you'll be asking for tablets of stone.
News reports are always subjective interpretations. For most recipients, though, the question is whether things 'appear' credible in the light of individual experience. It's at that point that reputations for accuracy come into the calculations.
Remember Pravda? Who do you trust?
>Drudge is little more than a mouth piece for the far right of the Republican party.
WRONG. Drudge is right wing when compared with the 80% of press release recyclers (formerly known as journalists) who vote for the democrats. I haven't seen Drudge try to say that a word document was made on a 1970s typewriter.
Guido dont crow so loud, so soon!
if the EUSSR gets its way you will be handed a list of things you can and cannot discuss and you will need a licence to do it, threatening us all and in the long term our safety. So would you be brave enough to stand up for free speech - how about making a start now! or are you just a shallow souless blogger out to make a quick buck an avoid all the big issues?
so guido when you gonna stand up and protect free speech? - on principle or just when it takes away your gravy train?
then again this blog has the most restrictive READERS comments section known outside of China, so i suspect it will be the latter.
One sure way to increase your chances of a trojan , endless crap, pop-ups etc., is to log on to Drudge.
List the exclusives since Monicagobblegate....
Never read Drudge. Crap, amateurish layout. Gives me a headache.
I'd hope Guide aspired to something rather higher, given that 1/3 of Drudge stories turn out to be misleading, and another 1/3rd blatatly false.
Getting the occasional scoop isn't much use with that sort of track record.
One lot that recognised the coming possibilities of the internet as an unregulated information conduit was the Clinton White House, Hillary in particular, who wanted an editing or gatekeeping function on the web and worked hard to close down "dissidents" who weren't afraid to expose dirty laundry.
As for Drudgwe, it's a useful set of links today but he too took heat when he shot to prominence.
And then he crawled up the backside of FAUX so far as to emerge from the other end spouting worse!
It seems that sperm prematurely ejaculated onto a blue dress still outdraws the eradication of the Irish Republican Army. The smart reporters seem to recognize that.
Funny then that Guido was on the Today Programme the other day admitting that in the 10 years since, there really haven't been many scoops uncovered by online-only journalists. Drudge got lucky. His site has little to no original content, and content is still largely the domain of the MSM. The revolution has not yet arrived.
Love him or hate him, you'd have to be an ignorant fool to think that Drudge hasn't changed the world.
Drudge didn't get lucky, he got soft. He used to be the source, now he's just the aggregator. But then, what do I know? I get all my news from Fark!
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