Break this: How could someone like Matt Drudge write...

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

...something as damning as this in an upcoming memoir and still expect people to believe his "reporting"? Who would take someone like that seriously? Here is the author in his own words:

:puke:

This isn’t the usual way reporters get their stories. The usual hack is assigned a beat, and his job is to find out everything that happens on that beat. You’re supposed to cultivate sources, whether it’s the librarian, janitor, cop, senator, or local grocer…anyone who can feed you information. You can’t just sit at your desk and wait for a story to fall into your lap, and you can’t rely solely on your sources. You have to do the digging on your own, whether it requires reading the police blotter or the city council agenda. I lucked into the best sources in the business: senators, congressmen, CEOs, stock traders, federal officials.

{snip}

All I needed to do was confirm the leak, get a comment from some state official, a stock analyst, and a spokesman at the utility, and then send the story off to be edited. A scoop is a scoop. In my opinion, as long as you are the first one who reports the news, you own the story. It doesn’t really matter how you get it. Other journalists will whine about ethics, but that’s a load of crap. If reporting a huge story required journalists to pimp their mothers, there would be a lot of elderly hookers on the street.

{snip}

But instead of following up on my scoops and going after bad guys, the press corps attacked my credibility. Reporters go out of their way to discredit journalists who continually scoop them. Otherwise they have to explain to their editors why they aren’t breaking the same stories. When the press corps rejected me I convinced myself that the whole goddamn world was conspiring against me. All I wanted was to be accepted as a member of their club.

{snip}

What I found out about my competitors is that most of them are a bunch of lazy fucks who are less inclined to dig for the truth than report bureaucratic bullshit and then go home for the day. They weren’t interested in the relentless, gumshoe reporting I shot my wad over. Luckily for me no one in the Sacramento press corps was smart enough to end my writing career by exposing me as the felonious thief and drug addict I was.

{snip}

That bitch. It all makes sense now. Motherfucking unbelievable. She’s trying to stop the other papers from picking up my story. That’s it. They’re trying to discredit me. You don’t need to be Woodward or Bernstein to figure out that there’s probably some truth—or maybe something bigger—to my story if the press office is going to such great lengths to stop it from being picked up by the Los Angeles Times. Man, I thought, if I could only control my drinking and coke habit, I’d pour myself a tall glass of brandy and snort a line or two off my desk. I don’t know how I’ve been able to stay straight during situations like this.

{snip}

I sat at my computer clicking the new message button on my inbox for three-and-a-half hours but I didn’t get any new e-mails from Hilary or Maviglio. I called Maviglio on his cell phone and went directly into his voicemail. “FUCK YOU!” I hollered into the phone. I did that over and over again until his voicemail was full. Then I called Maviglio’s private line in the press office and did the same thing. I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing I could think of. I drove back to my apartment. It was 2:10 a.m. Lisa was already asleep. I checked my e-mail. Still nothing. I got into bed and stared into darkness. I imagined I was a superhero flying into the capitol building in Sacramento. I borrowed the Rope of Truth from Wonder Woman and used it to force Maviglio and Hilary to tell the press corps that they lied, my story was accurate, and I was the greatest reporter that ever lived. I got into the office Thursday morning at 10 a.m. and those bastards still hadn’t sent out an e-mail to the press corps clearing my name. I called Maviglio before I took my 300 milligrams of antidepressants. That was a mistake.
“Maviglio?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to hire someone to chop your cat into little pieces, you piece of shit, you fuck, you asshole, prick, dick, asswipe, fuckface, fucklip, if you don’t clear my name now, you pussy.”

{snip}

No one knew how it really went down between me and the press office. And no one knew that I set Maviglio up just a few weeks earlier and nearly cost him his job. What goes around comes around.

:puke: :puke:

And just look at the plaudits he extracted from sympathetic pundits to pimp his upcoming book:

{This} memoir is full of eye-opening behind-the-scenes stories of the backbiting world of mainstream journalism and the manipulative relationship between ambitious reporters and savvy politicos.

{snip}

Beyond its revelations, {this} is a story of transformation, of how a man fueled by fear and self-destructive compulsions was tempered by love, self-awareness, and a harmonious relationship with the burgeoning independent media.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

His media company is stupid enough to post all this material on a publically-accessible web site. The links are below, you should check them out for yourself (warning: there are several PDFs so make sure you can open them). If they pull those links, I have downloaded the files and will host them elsewhere. The truth must be set free! Thanks to DUer foo_bar for tipping me on to this site in this post.

Who could believe that someone like Matt Drudge could write such a damning memoir and still be believed by his readers? I know I certainly don't. Someone like him with his "credentials" should know better...

Advance praise (PDF).
Press release (PDF).
Chapter 2 of the book (PDF) from which I took the above exerpts.
A biography of the author, like you would believe anything he wrote (PDF).
The whole shebang, including photos of the author (until they pull it).

Please discuss...

[Catherine Vincent]

1. Look who his readers are.

That should answer your question. :)

[pinto]

2. Locking.

Copywrite violation. Only 4 paragraphs can be quoted from a copywrited source, which in this case are quotes from Jason Leopold's book and it's promotion.

The implication that this post is quoting Drudge, also seems a little underhanded.

Thanks.