Why Link to DrudgeReport?

Layout

DrudgeReport loads extremely fast and its index approach makes it easy to lookup and find current news in politics and power quickly. Compare their time on site numbers with CNN. Users are staying on Drudge 23 minutes vs 4 minutes for CNN.  DrudgeReport aggregates most major news organizations in one easy to find place. There is no attempt to stop you from getting news from another site or hold you hostage to Drudge.  Look at the way CNN works or some of the other majors to compare the behavior. This web traffic report says it all.  Customers prefer to choose what they read, from any source they want.

Drudge CNN

Some people suggest DrudgeReport is a conservative site. Look at the links and see who is missing. DrudgeReport's user interface and indexed approach are simply good design. I was involved in a major interface project trying to present hundreds of pages of information that had to be accessible. After a lot of experimenting, we went back to the tree structure used in Windows because people are used to and it works. But to illustrate the point, here are four sites of more on the web if you want to look for them that also display news sites from all over the world. Think of being in a hurry to scan the news and click on the layouts below to see which of these you think works better than the simple 3 column newspaper layout and indexes Drudge mimics:
Readership

DrudgeReport is ranked higher than the New York Times and Washington Post in the United States in terms of page views, time on the site and unique views at the time of measurement. Now here is what is interesting. The New York Times reportedly has more than 1,000 college educated, highly paid and supposedly intelligent people running their site and yet readers prefer DrudgeReport. Matt Drudge said he started out alone in his apartment with his cat, and today still may only have a few part time employees.

Drudge says he picks headlines that interest him, and links to them. He does not editorialize these headlines, although you could say his picks are a form of editorializing. A lot of people must like the same things as Matt Drudge does.

Attitude

The third reason we link to the site is because of Matt Drudge's attitude. Matt Drudge is not a me too clone stamped out by a University, he is self taught and follows his instinct, which is a hint of what you can do if you try. Why is that important? Because there is a movement, a form of manipulation of society into brainwashing you with the idea that where you are educated, who you work for, the schools you attend, make you a better person. What about a Drudge, a Steve Jobs, a Thomas Edison, or a Henry Ford?  Are you going to say they went to the wrong school? Whatever lack of a fancy school they did not have clearly did not hurt them. It may be that a manipulated and conditioned mind is actually a problem, not a benefit.  If you live in a capitalist, free market economy you should know how to earn money like a capitalist, not be trained like a replaceable rat in a maze.

That ranking concept leads to hubris suggesting if you did not go to a good college and if you have dirt in your fingernails, you are at the bottom of the human scale and have to accept crumbs. I don't think so. Watch the video in this link and you can see the entire process play out. It is Matt Drudge speaking at the National Press Club in 1998.

You will notice how the audience questions his training and credentials. They question how he researches things. They question how and if he uses sources. You will notice they appear not understand the Internet at all. They appear to be upset he broke the Monica Lewinsky story before they did, and challenged his methods. I thought it funny when they questioned Drudge about his sourcing and he said he knocked on Monica Lewinsky's door at home but she did not answer.

The people questioning Drudge would have paid a lot of money to go to a good college, bought the right clothes and leased, bought, mortgaged, whatever, a fancy car in time to finally get a job with a major news organization, and then along comes a guy living in his apartment with a cat who never went to college, and his site is kicking their asses. You can imagine how that feels. 

Thomas Edison was taught at home by his mother, Steve Jobs dropped out of school, Drudge apparently never went, nor did Henry Ford. The lesson is when you continually follow other people you are slotted like rats in a maze.  A huge number of the world greatest inventions were developed by people who simply tried and worked hard at it.  You owe it to yourself and your children to break the mold of being the same as everyone else. Look at Drudge.