Influence
According to Quantcast, the site has more than 3 million page visits per day. According to Mark Halperin, "Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage", effectively steering the media's political coverage towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics." In The Way To Win, a book written by Halperin and John Harris, Drudge is called "the Walter Cronkite of his era." Democratic Party strategist Chris Lehane says "phones start ringing" whenever Drudge breaks a story, and Mark McKinnon, a former media advisor to George W. Bush, said that he checked the site 30–40 times per day. Matt Drudge has been criticized by other media news personalities: Bill O'Reilly twice called Drudge a "threat to democracy" in response to Drudge disclosing his book sales figures, and Keith Olbermann referred to Drudge as "an idiot with a modem".
Drudge (and his website) was labelled one of the "Top 10 anti-Barack Obama conservatives" by the US editor of The Daily Telegraph in February 2009.
In addition to the media influence, Drudge Report also has influenced design elements on other sites. Some with opposing view points and some who use the same format of listing news. A left-leaning parody site called Drudge Retort was founded in 1998 as "a send-up of Mr. Drudge's breathless style". According to the Newspaper Marketing Agency online analytics data for April 2010, the Drudge Report is the number one site referrer to all online UK commercial newspaper websites.
Read more about this topic: Drudge Report
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“My administration is pledged to follow the policies of Mr. Roosevelt in this regard, and while that pledge does not involve me in any obligation to carry them out unless I have Congressional authority to do so, it does require that I take every step and exert every legislative influence upon Congress to enact the legislation which shall best subserve the purposes indicated.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The woman who can’t influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“We can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)