The Drudge Report is a news aggregation website generally considered to be conservative. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Andrew Breitbart, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the U.S. and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors news stories himself based on tips. The Report originated in 1996 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It was most famous for being the first news source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public after Newsweek decided not to publish the story.

The Drudge Report started out as a gossip column focusing on Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Matt Drudge began publishing the email-based newsletter called Report from an apartment in Hollywood, California, using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. Drudge maintains the website from his home in Miami Beach, Florida, with help from Andrew Breitbart, who assists in story selection and headline writing. Breitbart, who describes himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch", works the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report, as well as running his own website (breitbart.com), and another website providing a conservative support system for people in the Los Angeles entertainment industry.

Drudge, who began his website in 1997 as a supplement to his $10/year email newsletter,

Content

The Drudge Report site consists mainly of selected hyperlinks to news websites all over the world. These linked stories are generally hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. The site also has links to media outlets and columnists. It sometimes includes stories written by Drudge — usually two or three paragraphs in length. They are generally concern a story about to be published in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge also occasionally publishes Nielsen, Arbitron, or BookScan ratings, or early election exit polls that are otherwise not made available to the public.

The site carries advertisements that generate the site's revenue. The Drudge Report's advertising is sold by Kevin Lucido, who runs the Vienna, Virginia-based ad firm Intermarkets.

In April, 2009, Associated Press announced that it would be examining the fair use doctrine used by sites like Google and Drudge Report to justify the use of AP content without payment.

Design

There are different importance levels a story could appear as on the site, the rating of which relies on Matt Drudge's editorial discretion. The Report almost always holds one major story above the logo, usually just one sentence hyperlinked to the most important story of the day. Other stories surrounding the main headline can be found in the upper left hand side of the page and link to more specific articles dealing with aspects of the headline story. The standard story, either the headline or links below the logo, are written in black. The stories Drudge considers most important are in red, all under a single major headline in large, bold type. For especially important breaking stories, especially if still emerging, Drudge places a flashing red siren on the screen.