Still, they appear to be cheap to operate. Each Drudge clone, after all, tends to look a lot like all the others. But Polskin doubts any of them will ever get anywhere near Drudge’s level of influence unless they can augment their links with original reporting. Rantingly and its upstart rivals have gained some foothold in broader conservative circles, earning shoutouts from the likes of Garrison. “I just think the story he’s telling right now is complete bullshit,” the site’s operator wrote in an email to The Daily Beast. Rantingly’s editor, who declined to give their name in an email to The Daily Beast but described himself or herself as a California resident who failed out of college “because I partied too hard,” said they still admired Drudge’s media acumen. The sites trying to copy Drudge’s formula often closely resemble The Drudge Report’s notoriously low-tech layout and three-column design. “Our readers are libertarians and conservatives and they say Drudge is far too left wing now,” WhatFinger’s operator wrote in an email. Pat.” The site’s editor claimed, without providing evidence, that traffic had jumped 75 percent amid conservative dissatisfaction with Drudge this fall. The operator of WhatFinger-named because readers can react to news articles with a thumbs-up, a thumbs-down, or a middle finger-identified themselves only as a “loudmouth editor” named “Sgt. Many of the operators of the Drudge clones, meanwhile, are entirely anonymous. “If criticism of Drudge keeps happening, it may create an opening for one of these sites to really become much more popular with an audience,” Polskin said.ĭrudge is famously reclusive, and didn’t respond to a request for comment. Howard Polskin, an observer who tracks right-wing media at The Righting, said the upstart aggregators could see some success if Trump supporters’ anger at Drudge continues. “Not what Matt Drudge thinks the internet should be talking about right now.” “It’s what the internet is talking about right now,” Gab founder Andrew Torba told The Daily Beast in an email. Gab, the social-media network popular with white-supremacist extremists, recently launched its own Drudge-style news aggregator site, Gab Trends, amid discontent from Trump supporters with Drudge. The owners of the conservative Drudge-style aggregator sites-with names like NewsAmmo, Rantingly, Liberty Daily, and WhatFinger-say they’ve seen traffic booms since outspoken conservatives began accusing Drudge of an anti-Trump bias. And now, as a measure of their dissatisfaction, would-be internet media moguls are looking to make it big by creating Drudge Report clones and, potentially, stealing his visitors. Donald Trump fans have been fuming for weeks at conservative mega-aggregator Matt Drudge, alleging that his Drudge Report has backed Democrats’ impeachment push and ignored GOP arguments in favor of the president.
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