Drudge: Influential Bloggers Don't Exist

Posted on April 18, 2005

Whether or not you like Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report website you have to give him credit for building a popular website by bringing the gossipy, tabloid style of news to the Web. A Times Online interview with Matt Drudge finds that Drudge runs his entire web operation himself and makes over $1 million a year. In the interview Drudge says that he is a conservative (not a right-wing republican) and he is not gay. Apparently, Drudge also dislikes the sudden competition from millions of bloggers:

Back in the 1990s Drudge was a believer in the empowering potential of the internet. In a speech he said, "We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be." Now he sounds disillusioned and says that the "din" is growing into a cacophony: "There�s a danger of the internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention." He is no fan of the blogging phenomenon (weblogs linking sites): "I don�t read them. I like to create waves and not surf them. And who are these influential bloggers? You can�t name one because they don't exist."

A search on Technorati finds over 10,000 blogs linking to DrudgeReport.com -- so it looks like blogs are helping Matt Drudge more than hurting him -- at least in the short term.