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The ''Drudge Report'' is a popular U.S.-based news Website run by Matt Drudge . The site consists primarily of links to stories from the US and international Mainstream Media about politics, entertainment, and various current events, and to many popular columnists, although occasionally Drudge authors a story of his own. The ''Report'' originated around 1994 as a weekly subscriber-based Email dispatch. Today, the ''Drudge Report'' resembles a simple Weblog , though Drudge himself dislikes this classification. Since there is little or no commentary to the page, a more accurate description of the Drudge Report would be "portal" rather than blog. The Drudge Report is most famous for being the first entity to break news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public, which led to President Clinton's impeachment and subsequent acquittal. Drudge styles himself as a maverick newsman without corporate bosses, demanding advertisers, or editors to influence his ''Report''. Critics regard him as either careless, reckless, or malicious with stories that are sometimes inaccurate or heavily biased. He has been criticized by various media news personalities such as Dan Rather who called the ''Report'' a "rumor mill" {Link without Title} , who referred to him as "an idiot with a modem" {Link without Title} . ORIGINS Drudge began publishing his email-based ''Report'' from an apartment in Hollywood, California . Today, he maintains the popular news website from a condominium in Miami Beach, Florida . Drudge, who once managed a CBS gift shop where he was privy to some insider gossip, uses connections with industry and media insiders to break stories sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. Drudge's reports were electronically syndicated by Wired News from November 1996 to May 1997. After that, AOL carried his reports until 1998 . He began his website in 1997 as a supplement to the email reports. He eventually stopped the email reports in favor of exclusively updating his website. It is unclear exactly when Drudge began publishing his reports. On post from that month, Drudge advertised his ''Report'' as covering :"the Entertainment industry, Poli-Video shows (political talk shows,) Talk Radio, and a cross section of things that the editor Matt Drudge is focusing in on. This weekly report arrives on Monday and is complimented (sic) with NEWS BREAKS as they occur. Already read by key players, this tip sheet will be sure to peak (sic) your interest." {Link without Title} Drudge first received national attention in 's departure from CBS News, Jerry Seinfeld 's million dollar contract, and John McCain 's notifying his staff that he had decided to run for president in 2000. CONTENT Drudge's website has a simple design, consisting of a banner headline and a number of other selected headlines in three columns. These linked stories are almost always hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. The rest of the website is filled with links to media outlets and a number of columnists. Although the site initially featured very few images, it is now usually illustrated with five or six photographs. Generally the images are also hosted on other news agencies' servers. Drudge has argued that he is within his rights under Fair Use to include tags referring to these images without permission. The ''Drudge Report'' website sometimes includes stories authored by Drudge himself, usually two to three paragraphs in length (a holdover from the previous email-only reports). These stories generally break a rumor concerning a story that is about to break in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge also occasionally publishes Nielsen , Arbitron , or BookScan ratings, internal email messages, or early election exit polls that are otherwise not made available to the public. In a 2003 interview in ''Radar'' magazine with Camille Paglia , Drudge said of his story selection: :"I just post the things I find interesting. I can't remember the last time I actually read a full-blown article, you know. Usually I just scan the first two paragraphs and the last two paragraphs... It comes down to an editorial decision that I make every second that I'm sitting in front of the monitors. If you're not careful you can fill up people's minds with stories that go nowhere." {Link without Title} Drudge reportedly makes a significant income from running the website. In 2003 he indicated that he makes over $800,000 per year from advertising revenue. That number could be much higher today, due to increased traffic and better Internet advertising rates. His overhead is almost nonexistent compared to regular news outlets; his only significant expenses are server hosting costs. The site reportedly receives 8–10 million page views per day, a number which has steadily increased during the early 2000s , though critics have alleged some large percentage of these page views are due to the site reloading itself every few minutes while a reader's Web browser is pointed to the page. CRITICISM Critics argue that the only stories Drudge actually breaks are completely conceived, researched, funded, and written by other reporters. In 1998 , Federal Judge Paul Friedman noted in a judgment on a Libel lawsuit, which ended in Drudge's favor, that Drudge is not a "reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer" (this case is covered in more detail below). Many times, Drudge Report will feature a shocking headline with a link back to Drudge. This has led many to question the verity of the text. However, most claims are eventually confirmed with an article link to the website of a traditional news outlet. Charges of bias .]] .]] During the 1990s , the ''Drudge Report'' gained a strong Conservative following for Drudge's heavy coverage of alleged scandals during President Bill Clinton 's administration. He has cultivated this following by often highlighting stories that appeal to conservatives, praise prominent conservatives, or criticize prominent liberals. This has led some critics to call him a mouthpiece of the conservative establishment in the United States. Drudge's politics are considered to be neo-conservative. Some critics argue, for example, that he has not been as aggressive in pursuing potential scandals during the George W. Bush administration as during the Clinton administration. Nevertheless, Drudge has repeatedly attempted to distance himself from establishment conservatives, arguing that his politics more accurately reflect Libertarianism . For example, he is often critical of the Federal Communications Commission 's regulation of indecency, the USA PATRIOT Act , the prevalence of hidden cameras in public places, of an increased and visible presence of police, and of attempts to limit online File-sharing . Drudge's defenders often reference the fact that he writes very few articles, generally only supplying links to the work of others. However, his detractors counter that he editorializes by juxtaposing a headline with an loosely-related image. Examples suggested by some include the following: On Wednesday, July 28, 2004, the ''Drudge Report'' featured the headline: "Edwards to Call Kerry 'Decisive, Strong,'" with a picture of a young woman in a tight tank top, and the slogan "John Edwards is Hot" placed above. Also, some feel that the last two words of this Arrested At White House In Cunning Stunt". Drudge has also been accused of editorializing through headlines alone. To wit: Linking to a story about a speech made in Sweden by one-time presidential nominee Al Gore , Drudge offered this headline on October 13, 2005: "Gore Unleashed In Sweden" {Link without Title} Notwithstanding these charges, a 2004 study on Media Bias (titled ''A Measure of Media Bias'') led by Tim Groseclose, of UCLA and Stanford , and Jeff Milyo of the University Of Chicago found the ''Drudge Report'' to be among the most centrist news outlet in their sample.[http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm] However, the findings of this study remain highly controversial.[http://media.eriposte.com/2-9.htm] Errors at the ''Report'' Matt Drudge has been erroneously quoted as saying the ''Report'' is 80 percent accurate. The attribution stems from Drudge's most famous incident of erroneous reporting, which occurred on . The "80 percent" Meme has been fueled by further articles and rumors in the ''Report'' that have been revealed to be completely wrong or unsubstantiated. The ''Report'' was the source of a sensational rumor (a "World Exclusive") in February 2004, about presidential candidate John Kerry , alleging that he had an affair with a young intern named Alexandra Polier . [http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/02/12/20040212_233205_mattjk1.htm] The woman, who in fact was never an intern for Kerry, denied the claim. In June 2004, Drudge apologized for the story, saying "In retrospect, I should have had a sentence saying, 'There is no evidence to tie Alex to John Kerry.' I should have put that." [http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001340.php]. Yet the story remained available on his website (though de-linked) up to a year after its publication. (The full text of the original reports are available at DrudgeReportArchives.com [http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/02/14/20040214_131608_mattjk6.htm ; DrudgeReportArchives.com is not affiliated with the Drudge Report.) A later erroneous report emerged in the 2004 US presidential campaign, one week before Senator Kerry announced his selection of Senator John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate. The ''Report'' headlined a prediction from a "top D.C. insider" saying that Senator Kerry would be announcing Senator Hillary Clinton as his running mate, declaring it to mark the beginning of a "massive love fest." {Link without Title} The story was de-linked one day later. After Edward's selection, Drudge removed all "VP Hillary" coverage without comment; the correction or outright removal of false content published at the ''Report'' is usually handled in similar no-comment fashion. Because the ''Drudge Report'' is not part of the Mainstream Media and is published electronically, and not in print, such inaccuracies and errors are often forgotten. Archives of older reports are generally not easy to find, and Drudge does not systematically archive any of his reports. A number of reports from 1995 to early 1997 are available in the Usenet archive provided by Google Groups . A more extensive archive of the website is provided by Drudge Report Archives , which purportedly has taken and stored snapshots of the Drudge Report homepage every two minutes since mid-November 2001. TRAFFIC In the year of 2005, Drudge reported 3,641,002,163 visits to his website, however the methodology behind what is counted as a visit has not been made public. ) was during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election . {Link without Title} The Drudge Report website uses the Meta Refresh HTML tag to cause a page reload every 200 seconds. Critics have alleged this automatic page reloading inflates the Drudge Report's traffic statistics for users who leave their web browsers pointed to the site. As simple as Matt's page is design wise, it has not as of yet (April 9, 2006) completely complied with any of the W3C's HTML web standards. What this means is that it may not render properly in all web browsers, although it appears to render fine in most mainstream browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer. EXTERNAL LINKS
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