Drudge Gets Page A1 Treatment from NY Times

Man, it must kill the old grey hag to recognize Matt Drudge, on Page A1 no less.

Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge

Maybe they're just hoping he drives some traffic their way.

Because of the sheer number of people who look at it and because of the attention it gets from the media, what appears on Drudge can, for a few minutes or an entire day, drive what appears elsewhere, making it, “a force in the political news cycle for both the press and the campaigns,” said David Chalian, the political director at ABC News.

Nielsen/NetRatings has clocked three million unique visitors to the site over the course of a month, and the Drudge Report said its users clicked onto the site a combined 16 million times in the course of a single day last week. The site’s influence, which is not limited to politics, has survived the proliferation of blogs offering all manner of news, analysis and gossip, as well as the advent of one-stop shopping political sites like Politico, which has a big staff of established political reporters.

What they'll never understand is Matt Drudge doesn't necessarily play the political bias game like, say, The New York Times.

He really doesn't care if he offends anyone and puts the stories out there.