10 Years Ago Today, Matt Drudge Broke the News
On Jan. 17, 1998, Matt Drudge reported that Newsweek had spiked Michael Isikoff's story about President Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, the first shot in the war between the corporate and cautious culture of mainstream journalism and the completely bonkers blogosphere.
Six weeks later, I registered Drudge.Com. It's hard to believe that Matt Drudge remains one of the most important journalists in the U.S., 10 years after he nabbed somebody else's scoop. I wish someone had told me, when I was enrolling in journalism school, that the road to becoming my generation's Edward R. Murrow passed through the CBS gift shop.
In honor of this milestone, the Retort has brought out its version of the siren: News Alert Banana.
As much as I'm loathe to give a compliment here, every news blogger and online journalist is an heir to Drudge, who realized before anyone else that all journalists are created equal on the browser's address bar.
So happy Monicaversary, everyone! I trust that you don't need to be told how this anniversary should be celebrated.
Comments
"...So happy Monicaversary, everyone! I trust that you don't need to be told how this anniversary should be celebrated..."
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
If journalism school graduates and their bosses had any integrity, Matt Drudge wouldn't have had a story to tell. The newspapers, news magazines and networks squandered their credibility and opened it up for him. Between Isikoff's bosses protecting Clinton and Dan Rather just making stuff up, the lapdog media created their competition.
Drudge was in business long before Monica.
True, but the Drudge Report was pretty obscure prior to the Isikoff scoop. He started by posting celebrity gossip to the Usenet newsgroup alt.showbiz.gossip, started a web site and mailing list, got Wired News and AOL to pay him to reprint his reports, and was only known for getting sued by Sidney Blumenthal for alleging without any proof that he beat his wife.
The sad truth is the newsweek spiked story was a cover for the fact that Ken Starr deliberately leaked the Lewinsky investigation to Mr. Drudge. It's details were things that could only have been known to a few people. Follow the path, Linda Tripp was the conduit for the Starr team to Lucianne Goldberg and on to Drudge. Not journalisms' finest hour. The Ken Starr investigation was the most unsecret secret investgation in the history of legal proceedings. Every salacious detail was provided to select members of the beltway press and none of these high-minded journalists ever bothered to mention the illegal activities of their sources. Drudge was just a cog in the wheel.
Yep, NYNICK, it's all a giant conspiracy. There's nothing that isn't a part of it. Why, you're even a part of it. Of course, you don't *know* you're a part of the giant conspiracy, but that's why it's so effective.
It's easy to see how a very little known blogger would be the absolute bestest place ever to leak a story, right? What color exactly is the sky in your world?
A decade of Drudgery - isn't that what Journalism is all about?
Guess not if you're fighting pseudo-journalistic "Crosswinds."
"It's details were things that could only have been known to a few people."
Geez, NYNick, you make Matt Drudge sound like Bob Woodward.
Go drudge... Way to become the news.
Here's another site for drudge fans: drudgetracker.com
The one thing worse than Matt Drudge is a certain pathetic leech who is getting rich off all the work that he is doing without lifting a finger himself.
Yes, indeed!
Ten years ago, the Democrats desperately needed a distraction from Billy's semen on a Whitehouse aide's dress.
... So, there was genocide in Bosnis/Hertzogovina and the whole Earth was on the brink of destruction by WMD!"
Of course, the world knows now that there was indeed TERRORISM being conducted by both sides against the other!
That never stopped the Democrats from calling anyone who disagreed with war in Bosnia an anti-patriotic and a subversive for partisanship; that is was nearly traitorous and a vile and despicable effort (the very reason I use those words!).
We now know that Milosovic and Serbia did NOT sponsor genocide, and that it was a local Herzegovina militia supported by local armed forces which conducted the terrorism on the part of ethnic Serbs, and al Qaeda who supplied the Muslim Bosnians terrorists, there.
Not a one of you made the least protest when Clinton used war as an excuse for avoiding his sexual and PUBLIC perversions.
Now, the entire Democrat party has tried to force defeat against a nation that supported such terrorism, threatened the world with WMD, threatened and attacked his neighbors, and murdered and raped people indiscrimnately!
They cheer for Democrat liars who go to war for semen!
Yet, they whine and cry for votes while America is at war with a Republican commander-in-chief!
What a pack of subversive, anti-patriotic partisan Democrats they happen to be in their Progressive-Change to communism ...
Just despicable!
FINALLY someone's talking about the Semen Wars!
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