Perhaps Sissy Willis (via Glenn) doesn’t know how right she is when she writes about Matt Drudge’s blogphobia this morning. A few weeks ago, I was linked on the Drudge Report (in red, no less), concerning some original reporting I was doing on Oil-for-Food. No, my server didn’t crash but the link, which had gone up in the evening, was gone by morning. Reason: it was put up by Andrew Breitbart in California and removed by Drudge himself in Florida the next day. Breitbart, who is very blog-friendly and was then doing half the Drudge Report, had made the citation and Drudge took it off. No matter that the story proved to be accurate. Our Matt evidently can’t stand on line competition. No real surprise there.
Maybe I am prejudiced in favor of Breitbart – a bright guy who has now left Drudge for more ambitious pastures – but I’ve noticed a decline in the Drudge Report recently. It seems to have lost its edge. But I don’t expect Matt to get desperate enough to link blogs. Generosity is not his long suit.
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
13 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):This is gonna kill O’Reilly … he’s gone for years running with stories from Drudge the day before.
Apr 17, 2005 - 9:01 am 2. charlotte:I saw your impressive red link, Roger, for the short while it was up! When it comes to Matt, it’s difficult to know whether his churlishness toward blogs is ‘king of the mountain’ or ‘queen bee’ behavior, childish games or zero-sum gaming, ego on the line or bottom-line.
But there’s always the fact you look better in a hat.
Apr 17, 2005 - 9:25 am 3. Terrye:I have noticed the same thing about Drudge myself.
It was like when he reported the hoax story about how Saddam was captured, and ignored it when the blogs showed the thing was nonsense.
Apr 17, 2005 - 10:23 am 4. kingmanor:I don’t know if Drudge removed your link on purpose. His headlines have a huge turnover rate. You could visit his website and again six hours later to find that not one headline is the same. You’ll find that most people who link to him actually link to http://www.drudgereportarchives.com to make sure the link won’t go dead in a few hours.
But yes I do think it seems that he’s a bit paranoid of blogs now, especially that there is very good competition in his niche (tabloid-y headlines) at http://www.sploid.com (owned by Wonkette’s Gawker Media, this is the self-proclaimed anti-Drudge site), and of course http://www.fark.com.
Apr 17, 2005 - 11:06 am 5. Peg C.:kingmanor, I have to disagree. I find that way too many idiotic headlines stay up on Drudge for days. Most of the time now, it is downright stale. I glance at him for a moment and move straight to blogs. He’s put up several downright wrong headlines (he had the pope dead before he was — is he turning into the MSM?) and most of his stuff is gutter-worthy and no more. He still provides a service but much less so for me now that the blogosphere is covering substantive issues seriously.
Does anyone remember who or what Breitbart left Drudge for?
Apr 17, 2005 - 11:44 am 6. erp:Drudge is bored and boring and doesn’t know what to do about it. Millions of dollars are no substitute for the breathless glory days of Monica.
Breitbart may be at Moonbat Central with David Horowitz.
Apr 17, 2005 - 1:13 pm 7. Kyda Sylvester:I agree about the decline; I used to go over there every day but now I only follow the occasional link.
There’s no reason to be bored by the news in these times unless you have a tabloid mentality.
Apr 17, 2005 - 4:58 pm 8. Joe Bonforte:I also stopped going to Drudge, after six years of daily visits. The in-your-face pop-up advertising got to be too much to bear. Even with pop-up blockers, a lot of his ads seem to get through.
It’s certainly his privilege to try and milk the site for whatever he can. But he’s pushed me out of any interest in visiting it anymore.
Apr 17, 2005 - 6:39 pm 9. Mike_Nargizian:Roger got the initial head up on Breitbart from my cohort at dailyscorecard.blogspot.com just for the record.
And Drudge definitely reads the blogs. He had the upside down clock up at his site during the day or the next? after Powerline and lgf blew that story up that morning. Scott and Paul speak about it at the CSPAN link. Considering how catty Drudge got with the other Giant EGO (Oreilly) after OEgo lied to Drudge about his Westwood One radio deal…., for which Drudge trashed him for months and still holds a grudge. lol! Drudge posted about his ‘bad radio ratings’ and maybe getting pulled off the air.
Drudge definitely provided much more of a new service a few years back when it was MSM, CNN and that’s it… (Oreilly too)
There’s more choices now, however, Drudge has become a brand name a kind of instant out of MSM brand name, and his site’s traffic is proof of that. In the last 3 years its gone off the charts comparably speaking. I remember the old days when he was getting a million to two a day.
S he’s not going anywhere, on the contrary he’s become a brand name without paying billions of dollars to get one.
So far the blogs are nowhere close to approaching him, because people can pop in to his site and get a quick glean of headlines they may not have seen in their paper whereas blogs are more attention intensive. Blogs are of course therefore, more personal for the more motivated news searcher, information debater and sharer.
It will be interesing to see if the new site can compete with Drudge, they’ll need a scandal to do it…
And in every interview I’ve seen he always seemed like kind of a snotty arrogant kind of semi geek. Drudge’s comment about Michael Moore was very telling to me. It just shows he is a business man who plays off his being anti-MSM when it pays for him… and thus appearing conservative. Notably he supported Gibson from the beginning as well, anti MSM.
And for the record, in every interview I’ve seen he always seemed like kind of a snotty arrogant kind of semi geek.
Apr 17, 2005 - 8:38 pm 10. Mike_Nargizian:(repeated the last line twice above)
Let me add that blogs will never approach him. Because its a pyramid kind of.
Blogs need to be smaller and thus can be more focused on the information they share, provide intellectual discourse and give and take.
Then you have larger instant sharing sites that feed off of blogs, ie.. Instapundit.
Then you have someone like Drudge who feeds off the MSM, instapundit, large blogs and I am sure some smaller very valuble blogs… the latter of which I imagine Roger has found his niche sites as well.
So to compete with Drudge you have to want to produce a board sheet of links etc… and I agree its got to be instantaneous and quick like trading stocks… and most bloggers don’t have the time or inclination to do that… but provide a valuble service and get more give and take with their readership as a result.
Mike
Apr 17, 2005 - 8:44 pm 11. freetotem:Drudge has largely gone National Enquirer. Most of his headlines and links now are either to stories that are themselves sensationalist and trivial or which have a sensationalist take on actually relevant stories. I still check him every day out of habit, but I find myself following few, if any, links either because I have already seen them elsewhere or because they are gossip sheet trash. I’m usually in and out in a minute or two.
Apr 18, 2005 - 12:00 pm 12. Eric Scheie:The reason bloggers aren’t linked at Drudge is because they’re loud and ugly — as opposed to the polite and circumspect people he does link (like Ann Coulter.)
I hope that explanation helps!
Apr 18, 2005 - 7:14 pm 13. Half Sigma:(1) Drudge was sort of the first blog, so attacking other bloggers is hypocrical.
(2) What had Drudge done lately? Nothing. He’s still living off his big Monica Lewinski scoop.
Apr 19, 2005 - 8:17 am