- previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- next
- | single page
E-mail
Print
Lucido, chief executive of Intermarkets Inc., says there are now as many as 1,000 advertisers on the Drudge Report at any given time, including such mainstream media outlets as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Lucido calls Drudge the big kahuna of an online client roster consisting mostly of conservative websites, including that of controversial commentator Ann Coulter. He won't talk about Drudge's income other than to say, "He's done well by us and vice versa."
But here's a clue: Gone is the cramped Hollywood apartment and the little Geo Metro that Drudge used to drive around town. He now lives and works in a $1-million-plus condominium in Miami's super-sleek Four Seasons hotel, "where civilized living reaches its highest form of expression," according to a sales pitch for the residences.
The luxury condos are located on the upper floors of the 70-story building, the tallest in Florida, and offer a dazzling view of Biscayne Bay through floor-to-ceiling windows. Live-ins like Drudge have full access to the hotel's amenities, including a 50,000-square-foot spa and sports club, three pools and daily maid service.
A Times reporter showed up at the hotel hoping to get a glimpse inside Drudge's posh base of operations, where he is said to have a bank of computers he scans. But the press-shy Drudge did not respond to the note slipped under his door by the concierge or to numerous phone calls and e-mails requesting an interview.
THE success of the Drudge Report rests in large part on an audience that comes back multiple times a day to catch up with breaking stories or check out the site's latest offbeat offerings, all presented with a tabloid sensibility befitting the retro "press" fedora Drudge wears in publicity shots. A link to a story on carnage in Iraq may coexist with a headline like this: "91 Feral Cats Kept by Woman in 2 Room Apartment in Boryspil, Ukraine."
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the Drudge Report received 3 million unique visits in June, with visitors spending an average of 1 hour and 6 minutes on the site. That's a lot of time clicking around, giving advertisers more opportunities to be seen. Nielsen/NetRating's measurements also show that visitors return an average of 20 times a month. Most newspaper websites would be fortunate to draw a quarter as many return visits.
Perhaps no one understands the Drudge Report's sway over this dedicated fan base better than Andrew Breitbart.
An author and son-in-law of actor Orson Bean, Breitbart has described himself as a "raucous, opinionated, red meat-eating libertarian who refuses to be relegated to a conservative ghetto." He's also Drudge's silent partner in picking stories and writing headlines for the site from his home on Los Angeles' Westside. "It's a one-man operation with a second guy," he says, careful not to upstage the boss.
When Breitbart is at the controls of the Drudge Report, which is almost every day, he regularly links to a website that provides up-to-the-minute wire-service stories — a website he created to cash in on Drudge's legions. In its first month of operation in summer 2005, breitbart.com was a runaway success with a reported 2.64 million visits, easily enough to attract quality advertisers. How could it falter when he could personally deliver Drudge's audience?
Breitbart says Drudge blessed the profitable arrangement and has "zero creative or business interest in the site." Breitbart says he "wanted to create the single best place where I could go as an avid news reader to get headlines the second they hit the Internet so I don't have to go to 40 sites." Beyond that, he says only, "I'm grateful for the traffic that is sent my way."
Breitbart met Drudge in the mid- 1990s. Drudge was e-mailing a gossipy, entertainment-oriented newsletter for free to a growing list of subscribers and posting it in an Internet chat room. He worked on a computer that his father insisted on buying for him at the Circuit City on Sunset Boulevard. Dad was concerned that his son, a self-described "untrained D student," was meandering through life.
At the time, Drudge was holding the latest in a grab bag of odd jobs, presiding over souvenirs as a salesclerk and supervisor in the CBS gift shop in Studio City. But this job — unlike, say, his stint as a 7-Eleven night manager back East — let him get in touch with his inner snoop. He dipped into trash cans at the studio, retrieving confidential TV ratings data, and schmoozed the production staffs of sitcoms. The tidbits he obtained went into his newsletter and, in 1995, onto his newly created website.
Now, not so many years later, CBS is discreetly using its former shop boy to pump the ratings of its premier news program, "60 Minutes."
Aware of Drudge's ability to drive the day's news agenda, the show's marketers e-mail him transcripts of upcoming segments for which they want advance buzz — be it one that includes GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a Mormon, saying he "can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy" or rapper Cam'ron saying he wouldn't help cops catch a serial killer because it would hurt his business and violate his "code of ethics."
The idea is to get reporters, who might throw away a self-serving network publicity release, to chase the item on the Drudge Report because it has "more of a news aura," explained a CBS executive who spoke anonymously. Some journalists, the executive said, might write the story simply to avoid getting beaten by someone else.
"By promoting on the Drudge Report, we raise the stakes," he said. "Drudge is like a megaphone in the cyber-world. Other news organizations and websites take their cue from him."
CNN Iraq reporter Michael Ware can unhappily relate to that phenomenon.
On April 1, in one of his "exclusives," Drudge accused Ware of heckling presidential candidate Sen. John McCain during a Baghdad news conference. The alleged incident occurred after Ware, a week earlier, had challenged the Arizona Republican's assertion that there were neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital safe enough for a stroll.
Drudge, in his five-paragraph report, quoted an unidentified official as saying that the CNN reporter was mocking McCain and laughing at him. "I've never witnessed such disrespect," the official said.
Lucido calls Drudge the big kahuna of an online client roster consisting mostly of conservative websites, including that of controversial commentator Ann Coulter. He won't talk about Drudge's income other than to say, "He's done well by us and vice versa."
But here's a clue: Gone is the cramped Hollywood apartment and the little Geo Metro that Drudge used to drive around town. He now lives and works in a $1-million-plus condominium in Miami's super-sleek Four Seasons hotel, "where civilized living reaches its highest form of expression," according to a sales pitch for the residences.
The luxury condos are located on the upper floors of the 70-story building, the tallest in Florida, and offer a dazzling view of Biscayne Bay through floor-to-ceiling windows. Live-ins like Drudge have full access to the hotel's amenities, including a 50,000-square-foot spa and sports club, three pools and daily maid service.
A Times reporter showed up at the hotel hoping to get a glimpse inside Drudge's posh base of operations, where he is said to have a bank of computers he scans. But the press-shy Drudge did not respond to the note slipped under his door by the concierge or to numerous phone calls and e-mails requesting an interview.
THE success of the Drudge Report rests in large part on an audience that comes back multiple times a day to catch up with breaking stories or check out the site's latest offbeat offerings, all presented with a tabloid sensibility befitting the retro "press" fedora Drudge wears in publicity shots. A link to a story on carnage in Iraq may coexist with a headline like this: "91 Feral Cats Kept by Woman in 2 Room Apartment in Boryspil, Ukraine."
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the Drudge Report received 3 million unique visits in June, with visitors spending an average of 1 hour and 6 minutes on the site. That's a lot of time clicking around, giving advertisers more opportunities to be seen. Nielsen/NetRating's measurements also show that visitors return an average of 20 times a month. Most newspaper websites would be fortunate to draw a quarter as many return visits.
Perhaps no one understands the Drudge Report's sway over this dedicated fan base better than Andrew Breitbart.
An author and son-in-law of actor Orson Bean, Breitbart has described himself as a "raucous, opinionated, red meat-eating libertarian who refuses to be relegated to a conservative ghetto." He's also Drudge's silent partner in picking stories and writing headlines for the site from his home on Los Angeles' Westside. "It's a one-man operation with a second guy," he says, careful not to upstage the boss.
When Breitbart is at the controls of the Drudge Report, which is almost every day, he regularly links to a website that provides up-to-the-minute wire-service stories — a website he created to cash in on Drudge's legions. In its first month of operation in summer 2005, breitbart.com was a runaway success with a reported 2.64 million visits, easily enough to attract quality advertisers. How could it falter when he could personally deliver Drudge's audience?
Breitbart says Drudge blessed the profitable arrangement and has "zero creative or business interest in the site." Breitbart says he "wanted to create the single best place where I could go as an avid news reader to get headlines the second they hit the Internet so I don't have to go to 40 sites." Beyond that, he says only, "I'm grateful for the traffic that is sent my way."
Breitbart met Drudge in the mid- 1990s. Drudge was e-mailing a gossipy, entertainment-oriented newsletter for free to a growing list of subscribers and posting it in an Internet chat room. He worked on a computer that his father insisted on buying for him at the Circuit City on Sunset Boulevard. Dad was concerned that his son, a self-described "untrained D student," was meandering through life.
At the time, Drudge was holding the latest in a grab bag of odd jobs, presiding over souvenirs as a salesclerk and supervisor in the CBS gift shop in Studio City. But this job — unlike, say, his stint as a 7-Eleven night manager back East — let him get in touch with his inner snoop. He dipped into trash cans at the studio, retrieving confidential TV ratings data, and schmoozed the production staffs of sitcoms. The tidbits he obtained went into his newsletter and, in 1995, onto his newly created website.
Now, not so many years later, CBS is discreetly using its former shop boy to pump the ratings of its premier news program, "60 Minutes."
Aware of Drudge's ability to drive the day's news agenda, the show's marketers e-mail him transcripts of upcoming segments for which they want advance buzz — be it one that includes GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, a Mormon, saying he "can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy" or rapper Cam'ron saying he wouldn't help cops catch a serial killer because it would hurt his business and violate his "code of ethics."
The idea is to get reporters, who might throw away a self-serving network publicity release, to chase the item on the Drudge Report because it has "more of a news aura," explained a CBS executive who spoke anonymously. Some journalists, the executive said, might write the story simply to avoid getting beaten by someone else.
"By promoting on the Drudge Report, we raise the stakes," he said. "Drudge is like a megaphone in the cyber-world. Other news organizations and websites take their cue from him."
CNN Iraq reporter Michael Ware can unhappily relate to that phenomenon.
On April 1, in one of his "exclusives," Drudge accused Ware of heckling presidential candidate Sen. John McCain during a Baghdad news conference. The alleged incident occurred after Ware, a week earlier, had challenged the Arizona Republican's assertion that there were neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital safe enough for a stroll.
Drudge, in his five-paragraph report, quoted an unidentified official as saying that the CNN reporter was mocking McCain and laughing at him. "I've never witnessed such disrespect," the official said.
Digg
Twitter
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Save more than