Newsweek's Isikoff on Matt Drudge: 'Much Less of a Factor than He Was Five Years Ago'

Business & Media Institute ^ | April 24, 2008 | Jeff Poor

[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.

[RJL]

Sadly he has also embraced some dubious advertising and scripting techniques with popups, animations, etc. A good firewall is a must.

I haven't visited Drudge in years, that's exactly what drove me away.

[BurbankKarl]

Drudge is making 7 large a year, what is Isikoff taking home?

[dr_lew]

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 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".

[Crazy Larry]

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.