posted on the DrudgeReport ......

July 19, 2016 By Oliver Darcy

CNN couldn't stop Donald Trump. Neither could Fox News.

Some of the nation's most influential conservatives, from Glenn Beck to Bill Kristol, were powerless. Karl Rove and the Bush family had no effect. Scandal after scandal failed to put a chink in his armor.

And the 16 other GOP contenders, comprising some of the party's brightest and budding stars, proved to be impotent.

But some observers say that one man may have had the power to prevent Donald Trump's accession within the Republican Party: Matt Drudge.

"If Drudge had come out really negatively against Trump and had supported someone who would have played well with his reader base like Cruz, it would have been much harder for Trump to win," BuzzFeed political reporter and editor Andrew Kaczynski told Business Insider, referring to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The news mogul, one of the most mysterious individuals in the media industry, operates entirely outside the New York City and Washington, D.C., apparatus. He is seemingly accountable to no one. He is rarely spotted in public and holds close company with only a few select people. Reporters tip him off to stories through email or instant messages but never expect a reply, knowing he is unlikely to write back.

Yet despite his reclusiveness, Drudge holds a firm grip on the conservative news cycle. As the founder and operator of the Drudge Report, he influences and often creates news narratives.

"In a sense, the Drudge Report acts both as a waterfall creating a 'trickle down' effect within the right-leaning (and sometimes mainstream media) as well as a gravitational force drawing stories to its preferred narrative," conservative talk-radio host John Ziegler said in a Mediaite column earlier this year.

Since its inception in 1996, the Drudge Report has been a home to conservatives who feel disenfranchised by traditional media. Drudge has marketed his website as a news destination not controlled by corporate interests or politicians.

And he has continued to have great success.

Last week, SimilarWeb, an analytics firm, ranked the Drudge Report as the third-most-trafficked media publisher in the US for June 2016. The website amassed 1.2 billion combined page views for the month — all with hardly any traffic coming from social-media channels.

Generating that many eyeballs would leave any media organization with a fair amount of influence over the news cycle. But Drudge is especially distinctive.

Insiders of all political stripes and professions furiously refresh his website throughout the day in their attempts to stay a step ahead of the news cycle. Almost any cable-news producer will reluctantly acknowledge having his website bookmarked as a regular destination. Emails released in December even revealed that Hillary Clinton's State Department kept tabs on the page, flagging stories featured on the website as possible public-relations headaches.

Moreover, as a link aggregator, Drudge does not host any content of his own on his website. Instead, he simply writes headlines and links out to stories from around the web, providing the beneficiary with high volumes of readers.

In fact, Drudge was the top traffic referrer to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other news outlets in 2015, according to a Vocativ report. The report said the site accounted for a staggering 52% of referral traffic to the Associated Press.

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http://www.businessinsider.com/drudge-report-trump-2016-7

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Maybe Drudge didn't "stop Trump" because he likes him, just as over 14 million other citizens.
This REALLY is a dopey article but it illustrates the frustration within the MSM that Trump got by them all! One after another, even as they were foolishly predicting his imminent demise!

Drudge is one of us!

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #5

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Zitat

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Legendary Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein says Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report deserves more credit for Donald Trump's GOP presidential nomination than any other news organization.

“Fox has driven Trump’s campaign less than Drudge," Bernstein, who famously broke the Watergate scandal, told CNN on Wednesday. "A large measure of why Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge.

"Drudge is really the great new factor in terms of media,” he added.
Bernstein also concluded that Drudge was unashamedly pro-Trump in its coverage.

"Drudge, that site, has been unapologetically in Trump's pocket from the beginning," he said. "And I would say that a large measure of why Donald Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge in much the way that Fox has, and you [anchor Brooke Baldwin] used the word 'kingmaker' — I'm not sure it goes quite far that way ... but it is an influence unequaled."

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http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-r...redit-for-trump

Color me skeptical of this even if it is the opinion of a "legendary" reporter.

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Color me skeptical as well. Isn't it a case of blaming the symptoms and missing the cause?

Donald Trump managed a brilliant campaign and here we have confusion by the media, blaming Drudge because they just don't understand.

Has Matt Drudge written even one article? So the site draws millions to it each day because he posts articles of interest.

No interest? no success for Drudge. Since when does that bestow kingmaker status? Drudge isn't the cause here.

Bernstein is being tossed about in the wake behind Trump's boat. Pay no attention to that man ...in the wake.