Posted on 04/24/2008 1:51:35 PM PDT by Julia A. Seymour
It’s been 10 years since the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. But the way it broke changed the way the news cycle functioned and has had a profound impact on the business of media.
In 1998, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff leaked the Lewinsky story to Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report. The story took off from there, and the rest is history. But a decade later, Isikoff said he doesn’t think Drudge is the player he once was.
“I’d say he is much less of a factor than he was five years ago,” Isikoff said. “I think he has lost a little bit of his edge. I think the point you’re making – the stories getting prematurely out there have much less to do with him today than with just the evolution of the media where everybody’s got a Web site. Everybody is looking at media where it is constant 24/7 news cycle.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessandmedia.org ...
And that would make Newsweek?
Drudge does seem more negative and anti-everything.
I’ve probably been to Drudge’s butt-ugly site 5 times in my life.
this Isik—whatever has had an edge sometime?
Funny. The same can be said of Micheal Isikoff (not to mention Newspeak Magazine itself).
I think that’s true. I haven’t been there in ages.
The Drudge Report is the first site I go to every morning after my home page.
Have any of Isikoff’s recent stories gotten any more people killed?
I hate to say this, but Drudge comes across as being in the tank for B. Hussein Obama
Drudge has spent the last two years using his smelling salts to prevent swooning for Hussein, that’s why.
Let Drudge’s influence factor be “N”.
Then, the sum of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, CNN, et al is equal to somewhere around N/20.
Hope the libs out there understand that since it actually took an assumption followed by some very simple math. Isikoff’ll get it - after around 5 minutes of intense study.
Drudge needs a scoop badly - he’s ten years past the first one.
He was excellent on radio - his satirical take on the vacuous celebrity and political culture was gold every week. The stories he chooses reflect this cynicism but it’s certainly easy to view him as a hype merchant and a Chicken Little especially on oil prices.
Sadly he has also embraced some dubious advertising and scripting techniques with popups, animations, etc. A good firewall is a must.
Drudge can go days at a time without adding new content these days. There’s no reason to go there, he’s not “breaking” anything.
Issikoff and his soon to permanently shut down Newsweek rag are huge factors in Drudge’s amazing success:
People want uncensored honest reporting, not Issikoff type fake news.
Drudge: 20 million + hits a day; 5 BILLION+ hits a year!!!!
Eat that, Issikoff, you envious loser!
Resist selling him short, if you listen to any radio talk
show in the nation, the stories they cover are the ones on
the Drudge front page. Someone thinks he’s relevant.
For the office bound like me, I sometimes go to it dozens of times a day. You can get the important stuff at one time and skip the garbage other places have. Free Republic is right after Drudge.
I would never even consider places like Time, Newsweek, etc. And I certainly wouldn't spend hard earned money on them.
exactly...watching Rush on the webcam...he’s hitting Drudge constantly during the commercial breaks.
The web hits tell you all you need to know...
BTW, he’s been my home page since 1995...
I actually agree with Isikoff on something? Unbelievable!
Drudge last went out on a limb in the runup to election 2004 with the Alexandra Polier (John Kerry affair)scam.
Ever since that stunt failed miserably he seems to have been reduced to cut and paste links with a picture here or there.
It’s not much of a site and Matt has become even less of a factor since he stopped doing his weakly(yes, on purpose) radio show.
I haven't visited Drudge in years, that's exactly what drove me away.
Drudge is making 7 large a year, what is Isikoff taking home?
I was just thinking today about how he's faded. I think he's probably just worn out, for one thing. He always used to say he did it all himself. I think he lost a lot giving up his show, too. It wasn't always great, but it did have the stamp of his unique personality, and it gave me and a lot of others a connection to him. Without it, he's just another web site. Finally, the world, or the internet, has passed him by. He used to rail against "bloggers" and what a horrible name it was ( of all things, ) and perhaps he recognized them as "the next thing".
I think Drudge is just as important today.
I don’t think his value is in finding the stories behind the scenes, such as Monica et al, but rather as a news editor that paints the news so differently than MSM that it is a must see. He takes everyone elses news, and displays it without the bias - no - without the liberal bias that plagues MSM. He finds the stories that MSM buries, and allows us to find them without having to scrub the news ourselves.
While I think Free Republic allows the same thing, it isn’t combined into a front page as Drudge is.
Sure I am bored with the Drudgereport sometimes, but I can think of no equal as news editors go for my desire for news.
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