Inside outsiders: Three media mavericks come to terms with success - Cultres & Reviews

Reason, May, 2001 by Steve Kurtz

Along with O'Reilly's viewers and Elder's listeners is another huge audience: Internet users. The Internet does, in fact, have the potential to revolutionize how we receive information. It may even change things more than radio or television did, by breaking the mainstream into thousands of rivulets. Once you get on the Internet, the hundreds of choices cable and radio offer immediately increase into millions. What's more, they can be both personalized and made interactive.

In his Manifesto, Internet pioneer Matt Drudge makes huge claims for his medium. (And he does see it as his--I don't think I caught a mention of any other Web site in his book.) He seems to think the revolution is already over and the Internet won. Drudge, of course, created The Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com). It started with his emailing show biz tidbits to a select few from his PG in a tiny Hollywood apartment. His audience grew exponentially and the gossip got to be more about politics. In 1998, when he broke the stalled Monica Lewinsky story, he made his name. His Web site presently gets over half a billion visits a year.

Drudge doesn't need to worry about the time constraints of TV or radio. He can put up whatever he wants, whenever he wants. At times, it seems his book tries to emulate this new world, going off in all directions at once. Drudge wants to be an updated Walter Winchell. As a result, he's created a book that's a weird mixture of film noir from the '40s, hipster language from the '50s, and Pop Art from the '60s. The book's layout includes different fonts, poetry, lists of diets, and pages with only the number zero. (Drudge keeps reminding us "it's the Zeroes"--most likely he's referring to the 2000s, but perhaps it's also an allusion to the Os and is of computer language.)

He narrates his story as if he's the hero in a bad Raymond Chandler novel: "... hop into my red Metro Geo, whose balding tires squeal all the way home. Past Melrose. Santa Monica. Sunset. I twitch at the Bank of America on the southwest corner where I deposit my nickels and dimes. In the ten years I've lived here, I've related to these streets so many different ways. I've walked 'em. I've skate-boarded 'em. Bussed [sic] 'em. Limousined 'em. I've been chased, but most of the time I'm chasing around and down the boulevards I call home."

The eccentricities of this eclectic style aren't too bothersome when he tells us the origin of The Drudge Report or the backstage story of L'Affaire Lewinsky. But as the book devolves into a screed against our mergered mass media, it doesn't wear well.

Moreover, his attack is overstated. The Internet hasn't taken over yet--people still get their news from television, radio, and papers, and the Internet is still mostly a supplement. In fact, a number of highflying Internet content providers have crashed since Drudge's book came out. His mockery of the media and their many failings, his pronouncements that print and TV are dead, come across as braggadocio. (He believes his airing of Monicagate was one of the top 10 media events of the 20th century, along with the invention of television, Edward R. Murrow's See It Now, and Ted Turner's launch of CNN.)