Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Chris Cillizza tries to understand Matt Drudge...

Chris Cillizza focuses on a recent New York Magazine piece on Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report in today's Washington post entitled, Understanding Matt Drudge. Chris recommends reading the lengthy New Yorker piece because he thinks he helps highlight the importance of the new media of which Drudge like him or not is a part of.

Upon Chris's recommendation, I did read the full New Yorker coverage, Watching Matt Drudge. The article starts out more like "where it the world is Matt Drudge" as Philip Weiss tries to hunt down Matt to get answers without trying to appear as a stalker. Some interesting selections from Weiss's piece:

Who is the man behind the Website? The more power Drudge has attained, the more reclusive he has become. Drudge seems to despise his own fame with a Kurt Cobain–like intensity. On radio he speaks of himself as a nobody and has referred to his fans as “psychic vampires.” He has utterly compartmentalized his life, separating the personal and the public. Acquaintances describe very brief, formal encounters, and even friends of Drudge’s, if there is such a category, generally communicate with him by IM. He’s said by some to be gay, but he has thrown water on these speculations.


I'm not sure I agree with Chris that this piece really tells us alot about the new media, it seems to focus on the personal trials and tribulations of Matt Drudge with a great deal of personal information such as his receiving psychiatric treatment as a teenager and personal information from the divorce of his two liberal parents.

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