Drudge Manifesto

Rating:
Summary: Matt Drudge - It could only happen in America!
Review: I literally read this book in one sitting. Had this book on order for months and it finally arrived today. I started reading it around 4PM and simply could not put it down. Dinner occurred between pages 96 and 120 and finally finished it around 8PM tonight.

This is clearly one of the greatest American stories I have ever read. A young clerk in a dead-end job, Matt started pulling Nielsen ratings out of CBS wastebaskets and posting them on the Internet. Soon, his mailing lists involved hundreds of people in the entertainment industry, many of which began giving him inside scoop on other things. Matt posted these as well and his website began to take off. Soon people from all over the country began feeding him tips. He developed some White House contacts and the rest is history.

Matt Drudge was one of the first people to realize that on the Internet, anybody could post anything and it could be seen by everybody everywhere. Matt has total editorial control of what he posts. Nobody can tell him he can't, nobody can fire him, nobody can blackball him because he doesn't belong to anything. For no matter how much the "mainstream" media try to discredit him, there will always be low-level employees at CBS, the New York Times or the Washington Post who will feed him inside information - or dish the dirt. And they HATE him for it!

I've been visiting the DRUDGE REPORT for four years now on a daily basis. It is my home page so I probably hit it at least 20-25 times a day. Yet whenever I see that blue siren flashing, I still get those same butterflies in my stomach, sort of like when they break into your favorite TV program with a SPECIAL NEWS REPORT. The amazing thing about Matt Drudge is that it could easily have been any one of us. It's just that Matt thought of it first and to his credit, he still does it best.

The book is laid out differently than your average book. As you read through it, you almost get the sense you are surfing the web and jumping from page to page. My only complaint about this book (and why I gave it four stars instead of five) is that it is just too short! At 247 pages I was left wanting more. So I logged onto his website before coming here to post this review, hoping to see the siren lit up with another breaking story. Not this time, but give him another hour.

Rating:
Summary: Editor, Shmeditor!
Review: Love MattDrudge. LoveChrisMatthewsBillOReillyJonahGoldbergGeorgeWillSeanHannityAlanColmesPaulaZahnGeraldoRush. Agree with KenStump: Hard to read, sloppy format, gimmicky style (or none at all). The result is what a hardcover book would look like if a nethead printed off his archived e-mail, dropped the pages, scooped them up and stapled them, out of order, and threw them through a vanity press transom. Bless Julia Phillips for allowing her name to appear (once, inside). One wonders if her compensation for her input was any more than a 39-cent taco. I am a Drudge fan. Drudge fans should buy this book, if only to validate his work, his risks, his values...if only to keep his cat, Cat, in Sheba. But even a big fan must point out that while most of DRUDGE's appeal (websitenotMatt) is its lack of an editorial filter, this book could have stood some blue pencil. Yes, Matt's news stories beat all major media to the punch, but his fans waited ten months...Ms. Phillips could have taken a day or two to skim the galleys. Nonetheless, Matt Drudge shares enjoyable details of his sleep-deprived, door-barricaded, very exciting life, from the first tips of the Lewinsky scandal to his hilarious encounter with Helen Thomas' White House UPI terminal. He spares no one of the "mainstream" media from comment. In fairness, as a fan, I am grateful the writing of this book did not distract much time away from The DRUDGE REPORT. I am also grateful to "the man with the Dickensian name" for sharing this book with his readers. Buy it. Read it. Spam it on.

Rating:
Summary: Revealing the man behind the Report
Review: Matt Drudge, with 'Drudge Manifesto', has proven himself as much of a creative writer as he is a courageous reporter and inspiring internet pioneer. From detailing the days leading to the break of the Lewinsky story, to recounting his first time in the White House press gallery, to telling of his days as a youth growing up in DC, Drudge bares his soul. And he does it in darling fashion.

Untypical of his press peers, Drudge is fun to read -- without a trace of arrogance or liberal bias. He is a genuine Gen X'er, able to relate to readers under 35, who have been raised in this pop-culture era of cynicism and distrust for our institutions of government and media. Despite his cutting-edge philosophy and insight, Drudge has relied on the old-fashioned spirit of the Fourth Estate to rekindle America's appetite for news. That energy, that passion for truth, makes Drudge's book impossible to put down.

Entertaining throughout, 'Manifesto' is just that, as Drudge declares TV and traditional print journalism as "dead, dead, dead." It is just another reason Drudge is feared by the outdated, corporate-run mainstream press corps. But with this dandy of a book, Drudge has made it known to those perched in journalism's ivory towers that he and the internet are here to stay.

Let the future begin.

Rating:
Summary: Wordsworth? No. But worth the words....
Review: Well, I can't say as how the punctuation or style is pleasing to the eye, but Matt Drudge's book is a reflection of his reporting style--no-frills and raw. As prose, this book will please few, but as a centerpiece to any debate on the topic of Big Media, it comes across as a lively fountainhead of ideas, proposals, and unabashed truths.

I suppose that those who resent Drudge as a "scandal monger" will hate the book, whereas those who can get past that moniker will see a Drudge that has put ABC News, CNN, and all the others of a close-knit media bloc in their place time and time again.