Matt Drudge
(1967 - living) U.S.A.
Journalist
Drudge was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he was a "loner" and a news junkie, a kid who grew up with talk radio as company. His first jobs included the night shift at a 7-11, and selling Time Life books over the phone.
He moved to Los Angeles, and then started "The Drudge Report" in 1995. He was managing the CBS studio gift shop and thought it would be an amusing hobby to use the Net to relay the gossip he overheard. Drudge's declared aim is to give "the American people" the information he believes to be correct or important, and to revolutionize the media industry.
Matt is perhaps most famous for breaking the story of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky; MSNBC correspondent Jeannette Walls, in her book Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip, profiled Drudge as someone who "hung out with a crowd of promiscuous, openly gay men and dated several of them", and quoted several of Drudge's gay former friends, including David Cohen, who says he used to date Drudge.
The book led to a war of words between Walls and Drudge, who insists he's just a straight man who enjoys and knows gay culture very well. In a Salon.com story about the dispute, Amy Reiter wrote:
"...Washington landscaper David Cohen confirmed to Daily News columnist George Rush that he did, in fact, date Drudge..."
Walls has stated in her Scoop column for MSNBC:
"I'm not out to hurt or embarrass Matt Drudge. I'm certainly not passing judgment on him. I do, however, find it hypocritical that a man who has become a spokesman of the far right has led a lifestyle at odds with the ultra-conservative values he supposedly embraces. Moreover, I find it ironic that a man whose entire career has been based on revealing the sexual behavior of others has a sexual history of his own that he now seems at pains to hide."
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