Influence
In their 2006 book The Way To Win, Mark Halperin and John Harris report that Republican National Convention chairman Ken Mehlman "kind of brags" (as CNN host Howard Kurtz puts it) about utilizing the Drudge channel. They also wrote that ""Drudge, with his droll Dickensian name, was not the only media or political agent whose actions led to John Kerry's defeat. But his role placed him at the center of the game."
In 2006, TIME Magazine named Drudge one of the 100 most influential people in the world, describing the Drudge Report as "A ludicrous combination of gossip, political intrigue and extreme weather reports ... still put together mostly by the guy who started out as a convenience-store clerk."
ABC News concluded that the Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage. The article says "Republican operatives keep an open line to Drudge, often using him to attack their opponents."
In October 2006, Washington Post editor Len Downie, speaking at the Online News Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C., said "Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."
On October 22, 2007, New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg wrote that Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, were cooperating with Drudge and "working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates – or unfavorable coverage of competitors – onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip." Rutenberg stated that Nielsen/NetRatings shows that the Drudge Report gets three million unique visitors over the course of a month, or approximately one percent of the population of the United States.
During the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, Drudge was described by some, including former presidential candidate Fred Thompson, as having a pro-Mitt Romney slant.
Read more about this topic: Matt Drudge
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The example of America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because it is the healing and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“A bestial and violent man will go so far as to kill because he is under the influence of drink, exasperated, or driven by rage and alcohol. He is paltry. He does not know the pleasure of killing, the charity of bestowing death like a caress, of linking it with the play of the noble wild beasts: every cat, every tiger, embraces its prey and licks it even while it destroys it.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)
“I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country’s God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)