The Most Powerful Journalist in the World
It was suggested earlier this morning, with some snide contempt, that Matt Drudge, he of the world famous Drudge Report, was “one of yours.” That is, a supposedly loathsome conservative. On behalf of those of us on/in the Right, I accept.
According to the UK’s Telegraph this morning, Mr. Drudge is now “the single most powerful journalist in the world.”
Ten years ago, he was a reclusive, pasty-faced 31-year-old who, bashing away on his laptop in his grungy Hollywood apartment, shot to prominence when he threatened to bring down Bill Clinton’s presidency by breaking news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Today… he remains an elusive, mysterious figure but the internet pioneer is arguably the single most powerful journalist – though his detractors even deny that is his occupation - in the world.
(T)he world of the Drudge Report (is) a world in which the successor to Walter Cronkite and Bob Woodward is a loner with no university education or journalistic background. He is now surreptitiously courted by the media and political elites that once derided him but now fear he has the power to change the course of an American election.
The Lewinsky scandal and the 2008 presidential campaign are the bookends to what could be described as the Drudge decade. At the start, he was the antagonist who came from nowhere – Bill Clinton initially fumbled the site’s name, calling it the Sludge Report. By the end, he had become Hillary Clinton’s weapon of choice against Mr. Obama.
Like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge is one of a kind… a unique figure who stands gleefully astride an audience he created. An audience without peer on the Left.
Read the whole thing!
