A few days late, but I had forgotten ;')
So much happened when Matt Drudge found out that Newsweek had spiked a story about the abuse of power and authority when Bill Clinton was playing around with Intern Monica Lewinsky, that it has actually given him a place in history surrounding a couple events.
The obvious was the exposure of the notorious behavior of a president in his position of power, and his ultimate impeachment; only the second U.S president in history to undergo the disgrace. It was one of the worst terms of office in presidential history, as well as one of the most corrupt.
Even with that, Matt Drudge will probably go down in history as the first major salvo that changed the traditional media industry, not only in the U.S., but inevitably, I believe, all across the world. It'll be about more than exposing Bill Clinton than Bill Clinton exposed himself (to Monica Lewinsky).
Rather, what Drudge has meant, has been the beginning of the end of mainstream media and reporting as we had known it. Of course this is all fairly old news now, although there is a ways to go before the final work is completed.
Yet it was Drudge and the power of the Internet that made this happen. The Clinton scandal was just the background story that revealed to millions the power that was now available. They ran with it!
Everything is still shaking out in the new media industry, and nothing will be close to falling into a routine any time soon. There's still far too much disruption and change to guarantee where all the chips will eventually fall.
What we do know, is media as we've known it for decades is over, there's no longer any doubt about that. The major reason is because someone had the guts to take up a story that the old gatekeepers refused to put out. The undermining of the mainstream media overall because of that ended the trust factor they had overall enjoyed for decades. The rest is history. Welcome to the revolution.
History will show that it all began with a man with a keyboard.
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