How Drudge Has Stayed on Top

[YankeeFan]

Pretty interesting article about the sustained influence of the Drudge Report:

For most big news Web sites, about 60 percent of the traffic is homegrown, people who come directly to the site by dint of a bookmark or typing in www.latimes.com or www.huffingtonpost.com. The other critical 40 percent comes by referrals, the links that are the source of drive-by traffic, new readers and heat-seekers on a particular story.

By far, most of the traffic from links comes from the sprawling hybrid of Google search and news, which provides about 30 percent of the visits to news sites, according to a report released last week by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, part of the Pew Research Center. And the second? Has to be Facebook, right? Nope. Then Twitter must be the next in line. Except it isn’t.

Give up? It’s The Drudge Report, a 14-year-old site — a relic by Web standards — conceived and operated by Matt Drudge. Using data from the Nielsen Company to examine the top 21 news sites on the Web, the report suggests that Mr. 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/business/media/16carr.html?hp

 

[SeanKennedy]

Hadn't been to the site in ... 10 years(?) until tonight.

 

[BobSacamano]

I have a co-worker who adores the site. Next to him is another co-worker who scrolls mediatakeout.com. I enjoy strolling behind them and appreciating the stark contrast.

 

[93Devil]

On top of what?

 

[DanOregon]

The nice thing about Drudge - by just glancing at the page you can figure out what Fox News will be talking about. Has he broken anything since his exclusive that John Kerry was having a baby with a staffer? And no, I'm not confused. Drudge wrote that Kerry and a staffer were having a kid - turned out Drudge was wrong.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

The nice thing about Drudge - by just glancing at the page you can figure out what Fox News will be talking about. Has he broken anything since his exclusive that John Kerry was having a baby with a staffer? And no, I'm not confused. Drudge wrote that Kerry and a staffer were having a kid - turned out Drudge was wrong.

Sure. Just a week or so ago he broke the story that the White House decided to release the Bin Laden photos.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

He's been riding that stained dress for years.

Most guys with his batting average aren't doing nearly as well as he is.

People love his particular collection of links.

 

[HejiraHenry]

Like many threads on this site, you can get the faint whiff here of penis envy.

That said, the moral of the story – and there is one – is that flash animations and "sexy" slideshows and imbedded videos don't (have to) matter nearly as much as having timely updates and a wide sweep of interesting links.

 

[printdust]

Drudge is the real deal, unafraid to offend the so called politically correct elite.

He also allows callers to talk, unlike Hannity.

 

[mustangj17]

Like many threads on this site, you can get the faint whiff here of penis envy.

That said, the moral of the story – and there is one – is that flash animations and "sexy" slideshows and imbedded videos don't (have to) matter nearly as much as having timely updates and a wide sweep of interesting links.

Plus 1.

 

[YankeeFan]

That said, the moral of the story – and there is one – is that flash animations and "sexy" slideshows and imbedded videos don't (have to) matter nearly as much as having timely updates and a wide sweep of interesting links.

And, regardless of politics, isn't that a heartening thing to see?

 

[Dick Whitman]

When I was a junior in college we talked about The Drudge Report nonstop in one of my media classes. Media History, I think, or Advanced Reporting, as an example of what the hot new thing was and where media was going. It was considered very cutting edge, but I didn't quite understand the appeal, or how anyone would ever go to the Internet for their news. Isn't that where you go hook up?

Reading how old the site is makes me feel old for the second time today. The other time was when I had Pandora on, heard Jeff Tweedy on an old Golden Smog song I recognized, and looked at the date: 1995.

 

[YankeeFan]

Drudge really is pretty fascinating. He does set the agenda for what's discussed on FOXNews & talk radio.

Hillary's campaign had someone dedicated to dealing with (and leaking to) him.

The number of clicks he drives is incredible. Breitbart.com was started & subscribed to AP solely for the links from Drudge's site. (He & Drudge -- as the article mentions -- are longtime friends. He was linking to AP articles anyway; driving traffic & money to people he didn't know, so they started a website just for those links.)

And, just the fact that he went from CBS gift shop employee to "media mogul" is incredible.

And the fact that, personally, he remains mostly under the radar, is interesting in its own right.

 

[wicked]

Our site fills a decent-sized niche in the news world. Yet when Drudge links to a story, our numbers increase 10-fold.

 

[YankeeFan]

Our site fills a decent-sized niche in the news world. Yet when Drudge links to a story, our numbers increase 10-fold.

That's pretty wild.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I followed a link to a story one day from there and there was an editor's note at the beginning that said: "For those of you coming here from The Drudge Report," and then it had a short spiel selling the site to people as a potential regular stop.

 

[hondo]

He's been riding that stained dress for years.

Most guys with his batting average aren't doing nearly as well as he is.

People love his particular collection of links.

But the links are already out there. He's merely compiling stuff. He's got no influence other than having a staff that scans all news outlets at all hours of the night. I've always felt that libs who complain about drudge are giving him too much credit.

 

[printdust]

Drudge is so far under the radar, he can utter something against gay marriage and not be hung to dry as a bigot.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Drudge really is pretty fascinating. He does set the agenda for what's discussed on FOXNews & talk radio.

Hillary's campaign had someone dedicated to dealing with (and leaking to) him.

The number of clicks he drives is incredible. Breitbart.com was started & subscribed to AP solely for the links from Drudge's site. (He & Drudge -- as the article mentions -- are longtime friends. He was linking to AP articles anyway; driving traffic & money to people he didn't know, so they started a website just for those links.)

And, just the fact that he went from CBS gift shop employee to "media mogul" is incredible.

And the fact that, personally, he remains mostly under the radar, is interesting in its own right.

The New York magazine profile done on MD a few years back was as good a look behind the curtain
as any media outlet's ever gotten.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

He's been riding that stained dress for years.

Most guys with his batting average aren't doing nearly as well as he is.

People love his particular collection of links.

But the links are already out there. He's merely compiling stuff. He's got no influence other than having a staff that scans all news outlets at all hours of the night. I've always felt that libs who complain about drudge are giving him too much credit.

Yes, they are. But there's that steady segment which really likes the combo of the available links and
his typical FOXesque slant on each day's developments.