Althouse: "Drudge, once thought of as a hothouse flower of the Lewinsky scandal, is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook."

May 15, 2011

"Drudge, once thought of as a hothouse flower of the Lewinsky scandal, is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook."

"His durability is, first and foremost, a personal achievement, a testament to the fact that he is... 'the best wire editor on the planet. He can look into a huge stream of news, find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it.'"

27 comments:

Fred4Pres said...: He has definite talent, but he was also one of the first in the medium, and that matters more than talent.; 5/15/11, 9:16 PM
A. Shmendrik said...: He's been my home page ever since the clinton-Lewinsky thing was blown...up.

I hope he's making a shitload of $$ - because it is a very valuable service to pungently point people in the direction of things the mainstream editors would like to avoid. I love that aspect of his site.; 5/15/11, 9:20 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: It is all about the headlines.; 5/15/11, 9:31 PM
edutcher said...: It must have killed the Gray Lady to say that.

He's been very effective blowing the Lefties' propaganda to Hell.; 5/15/11, 10:14 PM
PaulV said...: I do not think Drudge is a conservative. He is fair minded and refuses to spike the news our masters do not want us to know. That make him a true liberal, sort of a mass media Althouse.

WV inertnit What we view AA and DRUDGE on; 5/15/11, 10:17 PM
Carol_Herman said...: Breitbart. Who met him at the CBS Gift Store, back in 1995.

I remember reading, once, how as a kid (delivering newspapers), Drudge would look at the front page ... and re-write the headlines. He knew then, and he knows now, INSTINCTIVELY ... how to write a headline that grabs ya.

What did CBS do? Well, they had their "tick tock." So he just worked in the Gift Store.

The amazing thing is that I used to read a daily newspaper (or two). That were delivered to my doorstep while I slept. It was second nature to have ink stained hands in the morning. And, then, BECAUSE OF DRUDGE, I was able to discard newspapers and magazines, entirely.

Then, I discarded my TV!

Drudge makes it look easy. But consider this. He's practically bullet proof! People beg him to put up their link! (Doesn't take lawyers. Doesn't take big meetings.)

And, while it's a real menu. My stops are so specific, that occasionally Drudge puts them up in highlights of a different color. And, I laugh.

[Blogger is back to being "blogged" ... this is my 2nd attempt.) Copy/Paste.; 5/15/11, 10:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Here is the problem today, I have not been able to get to http://drudgereport.com/. I go to few sites each day: NYT, drudge, althouse, instapundit, politico, dailybeast. Drudge is down. Why?; 5/15/11, 10:47 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Is Facebook supposed to be good at driving news? I may misunderstand Facebook, as I'm not a user, but to say that Drudge is better at what he does than a half-billion folks on Facebook sounds like a meaningless comparison.; 5/15/11, 11:04 PM
chuck b. said...: I think maybe 1-2% of my Facebook friends post news links. And it's obscure things that they don't think you would have seen otherwise. If everyone used Facebook to post news links that would make it about an order of magnitude lamer than it already is.

Drudge was strangely intert the night it was revealed SEALS shot Bin Laden in the face, twice (I'm still celebrating). I was thinking even before that that maybe his time has passed for breaking news. He's still a very convenient aggregator.; 5/15/11, 11:09 PM
Anonymous said...: That's not actually really accurate. Most of Drudge's headlines are just the actual headlines he links to.

The man does have a tremendous, sensitive, and well-honed taste though. He is like the world's greatest news sommelier.; 5/15/11, 11:10 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh fuck. It's DaveTM! Why here? Why now?; 5/15/11, 11:11 PM
Anonymous said...: I had an argument once with a liberal here abut Drudge's politics. I said he was fair. The liberal said no way; Drudge is conservative.

I was wrong. Drudge is conservative. Or at least he has a serious axe to grind against most liberals.

Nothing wrong with that. If you don't have an agenda, you are either stupid or dead. Pointless just the same.; 5/15/11, 11:15 PM
ic said...: "find the hot story"

He's not the only one who finds the hot story, he is the only one who reports the hot story that the MSM want to suppress.; 5/15/11, 11:49 PM
Ralph L said...: Does anyone know how to turn off the auto-refresh on Drudge and others?
It drives me crazy on dialup.; 5/15/11, 11:56 PM
Anonymous said...: Tell me about it, Ralph. These manual wipers on my car are killing me. And don't even get me started about finding Betamax movies.; 5/15/11, 11:59 PM
Mark Daniels said...: I haven't looked at his site in years. For a time, I would check it out because people were talking about it. But I got tired of it; it sought to sensationalize, but it always just bored me.; 5/16/11, 12:12 AM
Methadras said...: Drudge is a goto page for me because it leads to other things that a lot of times I totally do not expect but am pleasantly surprised about. However, ever since his radio show went into retirement he has become completely recluse.; 5/16/11, 2:16 AM
Roger J. said...: Drudge is always my starting point for the daily news--almost every link you need to start is right there for me. And I suspect almost every editor of the fishwrap press starts with drudge first thing in the AM.; 5/16/11, 6:14 AM
traditionalguy said...: Drudge is to news what a scientist is to a Warmist pretender scientist. Drudge reports what happened even when it differs from the storyline fed by the governing authority. He makes observed data cause us to rework our model rather than our model cause us to rework our data.; 5/16/11, 7:25 AM
Parker Smith said...: Ralph L -

If you use Firefox, there's an extension called GreaseMonkey that can essentially re-write bits of web pages as they render.

There's a Drudge one at: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13594
that is supposed to stop the auto-refresh.

You can also get one for Memeorandum that color codes the links in varying shades of red and blue based on calculated political affiliation - kind of neat!; 5/16/11, 7:31 AM
Anonymous said...: I share the general puzzlement about why anyone would expect Facebook to be driving the news cycle. When I turn on CNN hardly any of the stories are about people's cats.; 5/16/11, 8:13 AM
David said...: An article from the New York Times that is well written, unbiased and interesting! How did they let that happen?; 5/16/11, 8:15 AM
paminwi said...: The person who wrote that article for the NYT will have a job evaluation this week and it will NOT be a favorable one. You know - they must document, document, document, before he can be put on the path to dismissal!; 5/16/11, 8:43 AM
David said...: C'mon, the real news in that article is that it says that Drudge "has a real knack for photo editing," a point that is becoming conventional wisdom but which was first made by Althouse.; 5/16/11, 9:39 AM
Carol said...: Geez to me Drudge is usually a single headline story of his own and a zillion links. Is a link to the WSJ or the French news wire somehow worse for being on his site?; 5/16/11, 11:41 AM