The Drudge Report recently announced that it has surpassed 1 billion pageviews per month. How many pageviews is that? It's about as many pageviews as The New York Times reportedly got per month as recently as a couple of years ago.
The Drudge Report has 14.4 million US readers per month — only slightly fewer readers than The New York Times (16.4 million), per Quantcast.
The New York Times is produced by ~1,200 journalists. The Drudge Report is produced by one.
Assuming The Drudge Report gets $1.50 per 1000 pages and has 1 billion pageviews per month, The Drudge Report should be generating revenue of $15-$20 million a year.
A range of 15x-25x earnings for the current incarnation of The Drudge Report, therefore, would produce an estimated value of $150 million to $375 million.
One of the most remarkable things about The Drudge Report is that the site's content still consists primarily of original headlines linked to stories elsewhere on the web. This is a highly innovative and efficient media model, one that takes full advantage of the amazing capabilities of the Internet.
The editorial content that Drudge creates, in other words, consists of finding and interpreting important stories from millions of information sources around the world. Rather than creating a huge newsroom itself, the Drudge Report uses the whole digital world as a newsroom. And, importantly, unlike many digital media businesses, Drudge compensates those who did the work of creating the content that Drudge links to by sending them hundreds of thousands of readers — readers that they almost certainly would not have had had Drudge not chosen to link to them.
Matt Drudge has not just created a quirky little headlines-and-links site that occasionally breaks news.
I am a political animal. I have looked in the direction of tech entrepreneurship since my personal Obama 08 fiasco, but volunteering for Reshma 2010 has brought back spring to my steps. And with a green card at least a year away, there is nothing to do in tech entrepreneurship in the first place.
Even in tech entrepreneurship I kept thinking in terms of internet access as the voting right for this 21st century. Well, how about the actual voting right itself? How about the mission of a universal spread of democracy? We are only half way there.
Personal money will be made. All it would take is one Nobel Peace Prize and I could be asking for speaking fees forever after that. When my tech blog did 3,000 page hits for a day several weeks back, I remember thinking, this alone could be a full time income. It is possible to become a six figure blogger.
I like to keep things simple for me personally. For example, freehand exercise is more appealing than working the machines. When you keep things materially simple, you get to become voracious about mindfood. Words, music, movies, people, conversations, concepts, ideas, places.
Broadband meets most of my needs.
Which is more appealing? The concept of universal broadband, or the concept of universal democracy? It does not even compare. Of course democracy. Universal broadband will necessarily follow universal democracy. Although broadband will help the democratic cause like few other technologies. And with democracy I have a track record. What I did for Nepal, I could do all over again for Iran. I don't seem to give a f___ about China's size. I could do it for China. I want the town where the Burmese dictator lives bombed according to the Bush doctrine. That still would fit my concept of nonviolent militancy. A lot of people think nonviolence is about putting up with evil. The truth is Gandhi said he'd rather people resisted injustice nonviolently, but if it is between inaction and violent resistance, he would go for violence. (Reshma Is Gujarati Like Gandhi, I Am Bihari Like Laloo)
I keep thinking in terms of being able to engineer the pouring of a trillion dollars into microfinance globally. That might be more possible from the political arena than from tech entrepreneurship.
My progressive political religion is like a religion to me. I sure put way more time into my progressive political religion than I do into my religion of birth Hinduism, or my second adopted religion Buddhism, or my religions of curiosity Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
Barack Obama leads the church for now. He is the top guy. His FDR aura is felt far and wide.
Bill Clinton and I know each other like serial killers know each other. We don't have to meet. We seem to be able to recognize each other's moves. (Rangel Has Gone Radioactive) I followed the 92 race through Time and Newsweek magazines in Kathmandu. It was my final year at high school.
When the Monica Lewinsky thing erupted I was sitting in front of a computer after dinner in Kentucky. I was up all night trying to track down any new development on the story, and instead I ended up watching that hug video clip countless times. My first, middle and last thought on the topic was the guy did it for his wife. He got sick and tired of what Ken Starr was doing to his wife and so he did what he could.
I had been watching the Ken Starr drama in pain. I had been in disbelief the entire time. In a country like where I grew up, Ken Starr would have disappeared the day after he pointed his finger at a Hillary figure. The queen of Nepal showed up at some remote police station unannounced, and the police constable was not able to recognize, and the dude lost his job. He could have lost more. And here was a guy who was supposed to be the most powerful man on earth, and he could not even protect his wife! This was a strange country. All the allegations were proven false. Starr spent taxpayers' money. He spent more money than Bill Clinton spent running for president. And he hounded everyone Bill Clinton had ever said hello to in Arkansas. It felt bizarre.
As early as 92, Hillary became my idea of a strong, smart woman. I hoped some day I could meet a woman like her. A partner in the truest sense of the word.
Ken Starr was not Hillary's fault. He was Bill Clinton's fault. So the dude authorizes him and then takes him on a personal tour of the White House. Talk about blind spots. That is taking optimism a little too far.
So Bill Clinton is on a three way with his wife Hillary, and his aide George Stephanopoulos. Hillary is saying do not authorize the investigation, there is nothing to investigate, it is all political. Boy George/Judas argues otherwise and Bill Clinton makes the mistake of his life and he goes for the Boy George/Judas line of action.
And Bill Clinton's Boy George mistake went a few years before that. In the fall of 91 Boy George shows up in Arkansas. And Bill Clinton is changing his pants. And he is like, it's okay, stay. We can keep talking. That scene led to the three way call a few years later and that resulted in the biggest pain on Clinton's family life.
Granted he was a desperate southern Governor in 91, but never make a political aide feel like they are co-family, because it is false, that just is not the case. Staffers can be fired. It is a professional relationship.
Hillary has always been a better judge of character than Bill Clinton. She earned better grades at Yale than Bill Clinton. I do feel like Hillary is a woman who was not able to reach her full potential. Monica Lewinsky contaminated her life, and at some level Hillary never really recovered. Here was a power couple that took for granted that the woman was going to have a career, and then suddenly the whole thing felt like one grand illusion.
Hillary is a wronged woman. She deserved her revenge. It was not about sex - there was not much sex - it was about the sexism. It was like Bill Clinton threw her Beijing speech right out the window.
