32 Facts About Drudge Report

1.

Drudge Report is a U S -based news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge, and run with the help of Charles Hurt and Daniel Halper.

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2.

Drudge Report originated in 1995 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch.

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3.

Drudge Report started in 1995 as a gossip column focusing on Hollywood and Washington, D C Matt Drudge began the email-based newsletter from an apartment in Hollywood, California, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories, sometimes before they hit the mainstream media.

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4.

John Ziegler has said that Drudge Report blocked Breitbart from posting content critical of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign for the US presidency.

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5.

Drudge Report, who began his website in 1997 as a supplement to his $10 per year e-mail newsletter, received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 US presidential election.

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6.

In 1998, Drudge Report made national waves when he broke the news that Newsweek magazine had information on an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President Bill Clinton—the Monica Lewinsky scandal—but was withholding publication.

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7.

Drudge Report occasionally publishes Nielsen, Arbitron, and BookScan ratings, or early election exit polls which are otherwise not made available to the public.

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8.

Drudge Report has experimented with temporary, relatively minor design tweaks, including using all black-and-white pictures for a period in August 2017 and using colored text for holidays instead of the standard black throughout the site's existence; in all cases, the basic layout remained consistent throughout its existence.

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9.

The Drudge Report has been described by Cheryl Woodard, co-founder of PC, Macworld, PC World and Publish magazines, as "a big, haphazard mishmash of links and photos" and by Dan Rahmel as "popular despite a plain appearance".

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10.

The Drudge Report website is simple and, according to Paul Armstrong of webwithoutwords.

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11.

The newest stories and those Drudge Report considers most important are in red, all under a single major headline in large bold type.

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12.

Matt Drudge Report has said that he is a conservative, but "more of a populist".

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13.

The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media.

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14.

In 2015 and 2016, Drudge Report repeatedly featured pro-Trump headlines during the Republican Party presidential primaries, leading Salon and Politico to describe Drudge Report as "all in" for Trump.

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15.

In 2019, Rasmussen Reports reported that Matt Drudge had sold the site and was no longer involved in its operations, which would explain the change in editorial direction; however, that reporting was not confirmed.

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16.

Revenue for the Drudge Report is driven by advertising that was managed for 20 years by Intermarkets, Inc During the summer of 2019, after many years of being known for "changing nothing" about the website, Drudge advertising shifted to a new company by the name of Granite Cubed.

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17.

In October 2019, the Drudge Report began linking to articles which were increasingly critical of Trump, reportedly the result of Drudge himself becoming "exasperated" by the president.

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18.

In 2006, Mark Halperin wrote that "Drudge Report's coverage affects the media's political coverage", effectively steering it towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics".

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19.

Rather than the broad impact posited by professional political observers, Wallsten found that, even on issues where the site should be expected to have its largest impact, the stories highlighted on the Drudge Report exert a fairly inconsistent influence over what traditional media outlets chose to cover.

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20.

Drudge Report originally attained prominence when it was the first to report what came to be known as the Lewinsky scandal.

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21.

In 1997, the Drudge Report reported that incoming White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal beat his wife and was covering it up.

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22.

Drudge Report is, as he admits himself, simply a purveyor of gossip.

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23.

In 1999, the Drudge Report announced that it had viewed a videotape which was the basis of a Star magazine and Hard Copy story.

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24.

Drudge Report said that he obtained the information from an anonymous source.

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25.

Drudge Report was accused by some commentators of planting a false story for political ends.

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26.

Drudge Report then printed a retraction of the story, including links to the news stories detailing that the attack had been a hoax, and that Ashley Todd had performed a similar "attack" on herself while volunteering in a local Ron Paul grassroots group.

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27.

Drudge Report's was later asked to leave the group because of the hoax.

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28.

Drudge Report promoted birther conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not a U S citizen.

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29.

Drudge Report promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, as well as conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich.

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30.

In October 2017, Drudge Report promoted conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

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31.

In October 2017, the Drudge Report shared a false Breitbart News story claiming that an undocumented immigrant caused the October 2017 Northern California wildfires.

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32.

In June 2018, the Drudge Report used a misleading headline and photo pairing to suggest that migrant children who had been separated from their parents by the Trump administration were violent criminals.

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