ABSTRACT
Net news, as Matt Drudge, puts it, is a 'fight for eyeballs'. And what wins the eyeball is fast news and 'pirate news' - stories that flout constraints. If Drudge has a role model in traditional journalism it seems to be Walter Winchell. Drudge drives a Metro Geo, the LA equivalent of Del Boy's Robin Reliant. Drudge has a regular feature on Fox News. Like Osama Bin Laden in his cave, Drudge had made the White House quake. Drudge believes that as TV ultimately served the movies, 'the Internet will save the news business.' Drudge's website clocked up a record number of hits and triggered a feeding frenzy in the in on the act by releasing extracts from the Tripp tapes on their website. The Drudge report take the form of Man Dredge’s 'scoop', accompanied by a gateway-link service to a hundred or so other proprietary news services and syndicated columnists.
