Matt Drudge

Drudge graduated 341st out of a high school class of 355.

In his book Drudge Manifesto, Drudge says that he "failed his Bar Mitzvah".

Drudge was unknown before he began the news aggregation site, the Drudge Report.

For many years, he took odd jobs such as night counterman at a 7-Eleven convenience store, telemarketer for Time-Life books, McDonald's manager, and sales assistant at a New York City grocery store.

Matthew Nathan Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American journalist and the creator/editor of the Drudge Report, an American news aggregator.

Drudge is also an author and a former radio and television show host.

Drudge was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. His father, Robert Drudge, a former social worker, and his mother divorced when he was six.

Drudge went to live with his mother.

He had few friends and was an avid news reader and radio talk show fan.

In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, where he took up residence in a small Hollywood apartment.

He took a job in the gift shop of CBS studios, eventually working his way up to manager.

Here, he was apparently privy to some inside gossip, part of the inspiration for founding the Drudge Report.

Drudge's website gained in popularity in the late 1990s when he reported a number of stories before the mainstream media.

Drudge met Andrew Breitbart in Los Angeles during the 1990s and became his mentor, with Breitbart later helping to run the Drudge Report.

Worried about his son's aimlessness, Drudge's father insisted on buying him a Packard Bell computer in 1994.

The Drudge Report began as email notes sent out to a few friends.

The original issues were part gossip and part opinion.

They were distributed as an email newsletter and posted to alt.showbiz.gossip Usenet forum.

In March 1995, the Drudge Report had 1,000 email subscribers; by 1997, Drudge had 85,000 subscribers to his email service.

In 1996, the newsletter transitioned slowly from entertainment gossip to political gossip and moved from email to the Web as its primary distribution mechanism.

Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election.

In 1998, he gained popularity when he published the reporting of then-Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, becoming the first media outlet to publish the news that later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

From June 1998 to November 1999, Drudge hosted a Saturday night television show called Drudge on the Fox News Channel.

The show ended by mutual agreement.

Drudge had refused to go on air, charging Fox News with censorship when the network prevented him from showing photos of surgery on Samuel Armas.

Drudge, who opposes abortion, wanted to use a picture of a tiny hand reaching out from the womb to dramatize his argument against late-term abortion, but Fox's John Moody decided that that would be misleading because the photo was not of an abortion but an emergency operation on the fetus for spina bifida.

Fox News alleged breach of contract but, after Drudge issued an apology, Fox issued a statement calling the parting "amicable".

Drudge hosted a Sunday night talk radio show – "the only time anyone will let me on the air", he quipped.

The show, which was also named the Drudge Report, was syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks.

He guest hosted for the conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Drudge gained notice in the early 2000s by becoming a frequent reference for news material on Limbaugh's, Sean Hannity's, and Mark Levin's radio shows.

He was often acknowledged by Michael Savage as a source of topics for The Savage Nation.

A story by Business 2.0 magazine from April 2003 estimated that Drudge's website received $3,500 a day (almost $1.3 million a year) in advertising revenues.

Subtracting his relatively minor server costs, the magazine estimated that the Drudge Report website netted $800,000 a year.

An article in The Miami Herald from September 2003 said that Drudge estimated he earns $1.2 million a year from his website and radio show.

During an April 30, 2004 appearance on C-SPAN, he confirmed that he earns over $1 million.

For many years, Drudge was based out of his one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood.

Today, he maintains the website from his two properties in Miami, Florida.

In updating the site, he reportedly monitors multiple television news channels and a number of websites on several computers in his home office.

Breitbart announced in 2005 that he was "amicably leaving the Drudge Report after a long and close working relationship with Matt Drudge", but still helped run Drudge's website from Los Angeles by working the afternoon shift, in addition to running Breitbart.