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Saturday 21 November 2009

The end of the Drudge era?

It's a long time since I paid much attention to the Drudge Report. That ludicrous non-story about the "mutilation" of the young McCain volunteer was the last straw. Time for fresh voices, says the FT's John Gapper:

The Ashley Todd affair was the latest in a series of failures...to recapture the magic of the past... The decline of Drudge [left] is part of a broader shift in the US media, both old and new, towards the Democratic party. Unlike in the last two elections, when Karl Rove... expertly exploited the media’s short attention span and love of sensation, the Republican candidate has lost their affection and respect. McCain bears a lot of the blame for that, since he has run a chaotic and unpleasant campaign...

All this, and falls in advertising and circulation, is pushing newspapers back to a scrappier, more plain-spoken and partisan “yellow press” past... Some old hacks are shocked... .  but it looks familiar enough to a British journalist: this is Fleet Street. It is what happens when you get intense competition among different media outlets, all seeking to play on (and pander to) the audience’s sympathies and biases.

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