Posted on 11/26/2023 6:15:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
It's no secret that for years, the Drudge Report drove conservative (and often mainstream) media news cycles. If Drudge was talking about it, you could bet everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to PJ Media was also discussing it. In fact, there was a symbiotic relationship between Drudge's aggregated links and the pages of most conservative media outlets. Pretty much everyone was either getting story prompts from Drudge or sending him stories (often via AOL Instant Messenger) hoping he'd link them.
A Drudge link day was always a good one for a website. In the early days of PJ Media, before we had the sophisticated technology we do now, a link would crash our severs. Back then, our tech guys would get an email alert anytime we got a Drudge link so they could fortify our site against the barrage of people swarming to read our stories.
I remember my first Drudge link. I wrote something criticizing John Kasich, then my governor (and the son of a mailman). I was so excited that I printed out the page and hung it on my refrigerator. It ranked up there with my first mentions by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Those were heady times.
For a few years, Drudge links made up a rather large percentage of traffic to our site. We'd get a link every day or two. Sometimes multiples. A link at the top of the page, "above the fold," could bring in hundreds of thousands of readers—and no small amount of revenue.
Many of you will recall that Drudge at first did everything he could to promote Donald Trump. Then something happened, some sort of falling-out that no one ever really got to the bottom of, and Matt Drudge turned on the president.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Now, if you go to the Drudge report you'll find links to a bunch of left-wing UK sites, and well-funded mainstream media sites like the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the New York Post. Good for them, I guess. For whatever reason, Matt Drudge, who was reportedly apolitical and more interested in the success of his site than anyagenda, decided to tank the site. A comparison of Similiar Web (a site that ranks websites based on various metrics) shows that Drudge was listed as #41 in the nation with 164 million visits in October 2018. Currently, the site ranks at #145 with 51 million visits in October 2023. That's a major, major drop.
Drudge didn’t turn on Trump, he sold the site to a bunch of leftists or at least Never Trumpers who have destroyed it. It was my home page for a decade. I don’t even go there anymore, it is just trash now.
Any news regarding the whereabouts of Matt Drudge himself?
Still lost in 1998?
my best guess is a nondisclosure agreement was part of the sale.
That would make sense.
Can’t blame Drudge for selling it. The pressures by the loathsome left (but I repeat myself) were undoubtedly tremendous, and a prudent decision would be to take the money and run. I wouldn’t doubt that he had threats made to his life (the left’s inevitable solution to everything, since they have no logical argument about any subject). Sooner or later, either we treat the left as Hamas is being treated, or we can look forward to a world of Palestines (or San Franciscos).
When Drudge sold off the site, I ceased looking at it anymore. I still have a link to it off my main web page, but it gets little use.
Drudge used to be a daily read until the big change. Haven’t bothered with it in many many moons.
Just think, the days of Drudge in the morning and Rush in the mid day. All the news one would ever want to hear.
All that’s left now is FR and a few other places.
It did not say what the “dirty little secret” is.
I found Free Republic through a link at Drudge just after 9/11.
That link no longer exists.
I cannot find anything on it, but I remember a big time conservative wonk (who, I cannot remember) said on his show that Drudge had told him when asked about why Drudge had turned on Trump and other conservatives...
“You should get out of the country now....you won’t believe what is coming. They have already won and we are just making noise.....”
Could have been Rush?, Mark Steyn?, even Breitbart?....
Maybe I will jog someone’s better memory.
I stopped visiting the Dredge Report back when he turned on Trump. Haven’t seen it in years, and don’t care to.
As I recall his ‘report’ was really just an aggregation site of many links that I’d use from time to time and it usually had headliners that had his slant on things. That ‘slant’ was why I stopped supporting his monetization efforts by ‘clicking’ there.
I found it (FR) in my searches during the very initial explosion of news surrounding Monica L and Slick Willy.
Here’s a good site => https://citizenfreepress.com/
Amen
what a shame drudge turned on us. We couldn’t even have one tiny piece of the media that was normal.
Read the whole article looking for “the dirty little secret.” NADA
I think only Matt’s beard and BFF, Ann Coulter, knows where he is.
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