THE THRILL OF DRUDGE WORK

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

It's Wednesday afternoon, and Matt Drudge is speed-dialing. in 30 minutes, he's made 20 phone calls trying to nail down the latest hot tip. A national newsweekly, he's been told, is doing a cover story on yet another major TV personality coming out of the closet. If Drudge could have found anything even resembling confirmation, he would have run with it. One press of a key and--bang!--the item would have been broadcast to the 60,000 Internet users who receive his breathless E-mail bulletins (and to tens of thousands more who visit his Website). There's nothing an avid Drudgester likes more than watching the king of new junk media outscoop the scoopers.

And that's what has his old media competitors howling: Drudge is a gossipmonger! Drudge is a thief! Drudge doesn't play by the rules! True, much of his material comes from peeking at, say, tomorrow's Washington Post headlines and running them today. Though he doesn't like to talk about it, he's got a couple of top-secret passwords that allow him to sneak into the internal computer networks of media powerhouses and, uh, window-shop among the works in progress. In addition, a network of tipsters, many of them reporters looking for a little advance buzz, regularly feed him leads.

It's a tough way to make a living, but that suits Drudge, 30, just fine. The son of a lawyer and a social worker, he worked his way into the celebrity-gossip business from the bottom--the CBS gift shop at Studio City. He sees himself as a kind of digital Robin Hood among a corrupt and venal press. "Journalists aren't supposed to make money," he says, in a tone that's spoiling the taste of my Frappucino. "I've got enough to feed me and the cat, Dexter. And enough to shine my shoes."

Drudge (and Dexter) lives in a six-room apartment in downtown Hollywood, where he does his reporting out of a homemade geekatorium: one TV showing CNN, another MSNBC, a third tuned to a direct-broadcast satellite. Rush Limbaugh, a fan and spiritual brother, blares out of one of the radios. Drudge's police scanner is crackling pure L.A. bad will. And of course, there are computers--three of them. They are his two-way pipeline to the Net. In the past 24 hours, 1,796 E-mail messages have poured into his In box--more than usual because of a couple of not entirely flattering stories in the Washington Post and PEOPLE magazine.

"I take some chances," Drudge admits. But he boasts that his items are "80% accurate"--counting his (correct) prediction of Bob Dole's running mate and his (apparently inaccurate) report that Paula Jones saw a bald-eagle tattoo in Bill Clinton's crotch area. His brand of fast-and-loose journalism seems to work online, where getting it first often means more than getting it right. And why not? It's a fast-food medium, and increasingly savvy users are learning (thank you, Pierre Salinger) to take a fistful of salt with every byte.

Drudge is being courted by two book publishers and has just signed an exclusive licensing deal with America Online. His E-mail reports are still available for free, but he may be having second thoughts. "If I ever really charge," he muses, "I'll be in fat city." Too bad journalists aren't supposed to make money.

Read the Netly News at netlynews.com and Drudge at www.drudgereport.com