time when established media outlets were hesitant to investi-
gate or to reveal it, Matt Drudge simultaneously deter-
mined the trajector y of Clinton’s second presidential term
and established himself as one of the main sources of a
stor y’s newsworthiness in the Internet age.
Matthew Nathan Drudge spent his formative years
giving little evidence of the cultural force that he was
to become. His parents separated when he was six
years old and were eventually divorced. His adoles-
cence was marked by occasional juvenile delin-
quency, unspectacular academic achievement, and
quixotic mischief. By his late twenties, his résumé
consisted mainly of low-level sales positions. In 1994,
his father bought him a computer, and before long
Drudge was surfing the Internet, collecting political
and entertainment gossip, and e-mailing them to a
growing list of friends. Drudge eventually came to
the attention of the reporter Chris Ruddy, who intro-
duced him to the Los Angeles radio talk-show host
George Putnam. Before long, Drudge was augment-
ing his Drudge Report with articles forWiredmaga-
zine and America Online.
Drudge’s first appearance as the subject of a high-
profile headline resulted in a lawsuit filed against
him by the journalist and Clinton aide Sidney
Blumenthal, whom Drudge had libeled by publish-
ing a false rumor accusing him of spousal abuse.
Drudge’s next moment in the spotlight, however,
had far more important—and, for him, far more
auspicious—ramifications. In January, 1998, he
learned thatNewsweekmagazine was suppressing a
story detailing President Bill Clinton’s affair with a
twenty-three-year-old White House intern. Unlike
the Blumenthal story, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal
turned out to be true, and, as the first journalist
to report it, Drudge became an information age ce-
lebrity.
By 1998, Drudge was hosting a weekly television
show,Drudge, on the Fox News Channel, thus mak-
ing his Fedora-wearing image part of his public per-
sona. In November, 1999, he resigned upon being
denied permission to air a photo of a prenatal opera-
tion that, according to Fox News, would have mis-
leadingly been used to dramatize his argument
against late-term abortion. After his stint at Fox
News, Drudge maintained and expanded his me-
dia presence by hosting a popular three-hour,
Sunday-night talk radio show, on which he fre-
quently inveighed against government surveillance
and controversially liberal politicians. He resigned
in September, 2007, citing a desire to have his
Sunday evenings free but assuring listeners that his
Internet efforts would continue unabated.Impact Drudge’s media-savvy intuition combined
with his unique access to (usually) reliable “inside”
sources often enabled him to be the first to publish
“hot” news stories. As a result, the Drudge Report
had by the end of the 1990’s, both through its origi-
nal content and through its links to other stories, be-
come enormously influential in determining the
topics most reported and debated in newspapers
and magazines and on cable television news net-
works and talk radio. The success of his own radio
talk show further reinforced the prominence of his
role in the growing interdependence of talk radio
and the Internet.The Nineties in America Drudge, Matt 273
Matt Drudge, editor of the political Web site the Drudge Report,
walks upstairs to his Hollywood apartment. Drudge became well
known after breaking the story on the Monica Lewinsky scandal
involving President Bill Clinton.(AP/Wide World Photos)