The man in Miami who refers 25% of British news sites’ US traffic
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 7 August 2007 at 10:16
Tags: Journalism
The Los Angeles Times this week ran a profile of Matt Drudge which examines his changing relationship with mainstream journalists in the United States.
Fully a quarter of all US traffic to British newpapers’ web sites is referred by Drudge’s site The Drudge Report, according July 2005 Nielsen/Netratings data cited in a recently-published paper by Neil Thurman of City University, so British journalists should take a look as well.
When Drudge first came to prominence in the late 1990s, journalists scorned him as an unreliable gossip-monger. But since then, publishers and journalists have come to realise that internet users rely on aggregators like Drudge to guide them through the thicket of online information and have begun actively courting his attention. Television publicists have been tipping him off in the hope of generating a buzz before major investigations are aired. To avoid his loathing of slef-publicists, some journalists have even taken to tipping him off about their own stories under false names.
All of them hope to have him drive his vast audience — 3 million unique visits in June, according to Nielsen/Netratings — to their sites with a simple link. The 1,000-plus advertisers that seek that audience’s attention have also changed a few other things have also changed for Drudge since he first came to prominence in the 1990s, the LA Times report says:
Gone is the cramped Hollywood apartment and the little Geo Metro that Drudge used to drive around town. He now lives and works in a $1-million-plus condominium in Miami’s super-sleek Four Seasons hotel, “where civilized living reaches its highest form of expression,” according to a sales pitch for the residences.
The luxury condos are located on the upper floors of the 70-story building, the tallest in Florida, and offer a dazzling view of Biscayne Bay through floor-to-ceiling windows. Live-ins like Drudge have full access to the hotel’s amenities, including a 50,000-square-foot spa and sports club, three pools and daily maid service.
But others are more concerned about Drudge’s influence over the online news agenda and sceptical about the commercial value of the traffic spikes he can deliver.
The LA Times report quotes Mackenzie Warren of the News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, who is concerned that Drudge sometimes crates outrage by putting his own political spin on insignificant stories that editors had deemed unworthy of extensive coverage.
Warren also says he Drudge traffic spike skew readership numbers and confuses advertisers, particularly for smaller regional sites. The national audience Drudge delivers, Warren says, is more interesting to nationally-orientated web sites.
That view is echoed by Barry Cooper, online managing editor of Pilot Online in Virginia, who tells the LA Times: “You’re always flattered when you get linked, but from a business and community standpoint, it doesn’t help.”
Tags: Journalism
