Sunday, January 18, 2009

Matt Drudge on the Internet in 1998

Found this long read (on another blog) from a speech Matt Drudge made to the National Press Club on June 2, 1998. I'm not a Drudge reader, although I have stopped there a couple times to see what the hub-bub was about, but this speech, given ten years ago is very enlightening.

While I disagree with some of what Drudge said in this speech and in the question and answer session that follows, you can certainly see that this man, who has no formal journalism or media training, saw the future of journalism far clearer than all the high-priced suits in all the top media organizations.

And given that a lot of them were in the room at the time he gave the speech their reticence to challenge the status quo and move forward into the new media is surprising.

http://www.libertyroundtable.org/library/essay.drudge.html

Here's a little sample from the Q&A:

MR. HARBRECHT: How many leaked stories do you get from mainstream journalists, and would you speculate on their motivation?

MR. DRUDGE: That's a good question, because what I've been doing lately is breaking news that's about to be broken, coverage of the coverage of the coverage. But that's where we are, since the media is so powerful. The media is comparable to government - probably passes government in raw power.

A lot of the stories are internal. They leak it to me wanting to get attention, wanting to get that headline. More times than not, I will not give it to them. It has to get - has to raise my whiskers. It has to be a good headline. I'm a sucker for a good story. I go where the stink is. I'm a partisan for news. If you got a story, I'll be listening outside when we're done. [Soft laughter]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and to think MLive emulates the Drudge Report, and that's no joke.