It’s been 5 years since my favorite little media news hound guy rocked the world and shook up a presidency and changed Internet news as we knew it to be then.
Matt Drudge’s report is celebrating it’s 5th anniversary since he bursted on the scene of Internet news reporting. This guy started his web site in a little one-room apartment. He basically just started collecting Hollywood gossip tidbits and began posting the information on his web site for the amusement of himself and his friends. Until that fateful day – January 17, 1998, to be exactly – that he broke clean through the rest of the mainstream media with a breaking story about our President’s sexual indiscretions with a 23-year-old intern.
It was funny. I was reading Drudge back then – - even before the Clinton news break. The mainstream media – - Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune – were enraged and called Drudge a mongrel. Called him illegitimate. Called FOUL! However, what was found out later is that ‘some’ of those publications had the very same story sitting on their news desks – and were vacillating over whether or not to report it in the news. They were completely frozen with ice cold fear over breaking a story of this nature.
*cough* Now I’m just speculating here – - – but had it been during a Republican presidency, I’m sure there would have been no hesitation. But I digress.
Yay for Matt Drudge and his once-little gossip web site that now boasts over 5 Million hits per day. Just goes to show what one guy/girl – - one voice – - can accomplish on the WWW.
