Post: #1

DRUDGE ALTERNATIVES (UPDATE):

https://thelibertydaily.com/
https://rantingly.com/
https://trends.gab.com/

--


I've noticed in the past few months that Drudge (https://drudgereport.com/) is painting a more moderate narrative than before. He is moving left of Fox News. Other people are noticing:

I suppose his true colors as a homosexual Jew are coming out. He has always been sympathetic to the gays.

One theory is that he changed to appeal to get more money for ads.

The ad company is connected to a Google employee:

Post: #2

Yeah I noticed this the other day.

I don't visit the site regularly so I wasn't sure if it was just a bad run or I'd spent too long in an echo-chamber and was getting a look at the normie-Right for the first time in a while.

But apparently not. Looks like they're on the path to convergement.

Post: #3

Those screenshots are from the BuzzFeed story about the ad company. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/cra...ad-revenue

Whatever the case, I figure he used to get about 360 page views from me daily. (It was my homepage + auto-refresh every two minutes for 12 hours.) I give him four or five now.

Good opportunity for someone with a following to create a new right-leaning replacement for Drudge. (@Roosh)

Post: #4

Funny you mention this as I deleted drudge from my bookmarks last week for posting similar headlines.

Post: #5

Robert Stacey McCain suggested another idea on his blog recently. The Drudge Report might be trying to make the democrats look like the lunatics they are:

Quote: My hunch is that Drudge looks upon impeachment (and “scandal” generally) as good for his traffic. Besides, if you think that impeachment is apt to prove disastrous for Democrats (as I do), wouldn’t it actually be your duty as a right-wing journalist to encourage them to pursue this mania? So if Drudge’s choice of headlines seems anti-Trump lately, is that possibly misleading? And deliberately so?

Retrieved from https://theothermccain.com/2019/09/29/im...ent-mania/

I'm not certain either way.

Post: #6

I've scanned Drudge for over 20 years and have also noticed a distinct leftward/centrist shift in the past year.

Add to that his semi-fixation with sex robots and about 3 straight months worth of articles about "Mayor Pete" when he was "having his moment," and well, I've started using https://www.christiandailyreporter.com/ as my main aggregator. This is the site launched by the guy who started the Babylon Bee. He also started a news site at https://www.disrn.com/.

Post: #7

I think Drudge is still pretty decent, honestly if you want any "complete" view of the news/social commentary you really should be reading 3-4 sources minimum.

I use RealClear and Reuters for daily stuff, Reuters has a good 15-min daily video news briefing if you're interested in mainstream but reliable coverage. Politico has "inside the beltway" newsletters that are different from the usual tripe us commoners are given; they're worth the look to find the email list.
For the views of the "Cathedral" (to use Moldbug's term) I regularly read the BBC Ideas section, Foreign Policy, Aeon, Commonweal and Jacobin. All are quite leftist but still provide intelligent commentary. I'm more of a pro-Vat. II Catholic so I enjoy "liberal" sites like America Magazine, Barron's videos, even First Things, but YMMV.

In terms of stuff on the "right" I've never liked Zero Hedge oddly enough. I'll read American Sun, they're good and provide lots of links to similar minded sites. Additionally I'll check MintPress occasionally for longer articles, Jacobite too. Sometimes foreign newspapers have more "unbiased" international coverage in English: it's worth checking out The Hindu and UAE's national paper, both are pretty decent for foreign commentary.

Other sites I check on-and-off are National Interest and The Diplomat for foreign policy stuff (my main area of interest); both of these sites are good for mainstream Asia-Pacific coverage too. Sometimes I'll search for stories in DuckDuckGo as they pull from different, less mainstream sites in results when compared to Google/Bing etc.

Post: #8

Over the last two years the decline of Drudge has been very noticeable. r/The_Donald has regular 'WTF Drudge!?' posts.

Rantingly is a good alternative that I have been using for a while.

Whatfinger "was founded by military people and 100% unapologetic for being patriotic". It has a huge amount of links but suffers from a messy layout.

The Liberty Mill is much tidier and more compact, grouping links by source. However, they only covers alt-sources, no direct MSM.

You can find a mini curated aggregator at InfoGalactic News.

Post: #9

Surprise - homosexual Jew is no true patriot.

The surprise is that it took him so long....

Post: #10

I finally had it with Drudge weeks ago and have been encouraging people on social media to abandon the site. I don't expect all sunshine and roses but Drudge squares up his site and frames headlines to dispirit conservatives, which until recently the site was geared to.

Post: #11

(10-09-2019 11:56 PM)Athanasius Wrote:  I've scanned Drudge for over 20 years and have also noticed a distinct leftward/centrist shift in the past year.

Add to that his semi-fixation with sex robots and about 3 straight months worth of articles about "Mayor Pete" when he was "having his moment," and well, I've started using https://www.christiandailyreporter.com/ as my main aggregator. This is the site launched by the guy who started the Babylon Bee. He also started a news site at https://www.disrn.com/.

Christian Daily Reporter is solid. The guy who created it said he based his own site on Drudge. The guy is pretty woke on the issues on big social media companies having massive powers to determine who gets heard or doesn't get heard.

https://adam4d.com/introducing-christian...-reporter/

Quote:I’ve always wanted to make a Christian news aggregator. (Yes, for REAL news). Like the Drudge Report, but for Christians. It’s been one of those ideas I’ve had for years and that has just never let go of me — just like The Babylon Bee was.

Quote:One thing I’ve grown increasingly concerned about in the past year or two is the enormous power we have given tech giants like Facebook and Google. Power not just over referral traffic and website monetization (which, after running two highly trafficked websites, I can attest is monumental), but the power to control information and shape society, especially as they continue to gobble up the internet while growing more and more hostile to the Christian worldview. They have a choke-hold on the flow of information on the internet. For this and other reasons, CDR is not on any social media channel and never will be. It’s completely Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter-free. There are no third-party trackers or anything like that. It’s just a static web page containing links, updated by hand. I don’t even use a content management system like WordPress. Zero gatekeepers. Zero apologies. Accountable to no one but God.

Post: #12

(10-10-2019 12:12 AM)Buck Mulligan Wrote:  Other sites I check on-and-off are National Interest and The Diplomat for foreign policy stuff (my main area of interest); both of these sites are good for mainstream Asia-Pacific coverage too. Sometimes I'll search for stories in DuckDuckGo as they pull from different, less mainstream sites in results when compared to Google/Bing etc.

Thumbs up on National Interest. They are one of the few foreign policy/international relations publications that doesn't tout the neo-con/liberal order/globalist line. Rather, the align closer to the realist vision of less foreign interventions and are skeptical of any sort of nation building.

Post: #13

Rantingly is pretty good and a similar format.

Anonymous Conservative blog is good but with a conspiratorial bent, which is very good. AC claims that Drudge sold out for big advertising dollars, and suspects the advertising dollars are fake and just a disguised payoff.

I like to keep abreast of various conspiracy theories not because they are all true but because it opens your mind to what might be true.

Post: #14

Zerohegde for the win!

Post: #15

^^ I've always been a fan of Zerohedge.

Post: #16

The good sites: Roosh, Zerohedge, Anonymous Conservative, ZeroHedge, Vox Day, 8chan /pol (will be revived one day), even Daily Stormer
The bad sites: Drudge, Breitbart, mainstream media, any site (((owned)))

Post: #17

Antiwar.com is another good un-zogged source of information, particularly on foreign policy.

The American Conservative is also very good, a paleoconservative publication.

Post: #18

It's not just us who have noticed his leftward shift. He got ratio'd on his most recent tweet announcing the Drudge app:

Post: #19

Another alternative worth checking out:

https://thelibertydaily.com/

Post: #20

Drudge is losing his audience.

Post: #21

   

Here's the Buzzfeed article he mentioned:

Quote:Matt Drudge Has Barely Changed Anything About The Drudge Report In The Last 20 Years. This Summer, He Upended Its Advertising Business.

The Drudge Report, with its Web 1.0 design offering a single page of links, is one of the enduring internet media business success stories. Two decades after rising to prominence for breaking news of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair, it remains one of the most popular websites in the United States and a key source of right-wing ideas for its readers, including President Donald Trump.

Owner Matt Drudge is also still adept at attracting attention, such as last week when his was the only major news site to post the El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooter’s manifesto. But the site has always resisted the temptation to build anything beyond the simplest business of selling display advertising on a single homepage.

Now, Drudge has quietly flipped the switch on perhaps the biggest change he’s ever made: He’s ditched his longtime advertising partner for a new representative, in the process revealing new details about his business and attracting scrutiny of how his site operates.

The reclusive publisher does not disclose revenue figures, but estimates put the site’s annual haul well into the realm of millions of dollars per year. Pathmatics, a marketing intelligence platform, estimates that over the past 12 months the site generated more than $30 million in ad revenue. Another estimate from the Global Disinformation Index, to be published in a report next month, pegs revenue at $9 million per year.

In a surprising turn, Drudge Report removed ads between the end of May and mid-July, according to Danny Rogers, a cofounder of the Global Disinformation Index, a project that’s analyzing domains to generate “risk ratings of the world’s media sites.” After noticing an absence of ads on Drudge around May 31, “we didn’t see any ads on Drudge until about July 12,” Rogers told BuzzFeed News.

During that period, Drudge cast off his advertising representative of close to 20 years, Intermarkets, in favor of a new and unknown company, Granite Cubed. It has no record in the digital ad industry, was only registered as a company in March of this year, and lists no staff or owners on its websites. Yet it just landed one of the biggest websites in the US.

“Any time a 20-year relationship comes to an end is certainly a surprising turn of events,” said Jay Friedman, president of Goodway Group, a digital agency that specializes in programmatic media buying.

Corporate records show that Granite Cubed is owned by Margaret Otto. She and her husband, Adrian, have a business association with the Drudge family that goes back years. The couple acquired Refdesk, a reference website founded by Bob Drudge, Matt’s father, in 2017. They also operated a company that began hosting the Drudge Report in 1999 and later added Breitbart as a customer. (The couple did not answer questions about whether they still own that hosting company or if it’s still hosting Drudge or Breitbart.)

Adrian Otto is the technical director of Google Cloud. He told BuzzFeed News he is not involved with Granite Cubed. Upon joining Google in 2017 from Rackspace, he said, he “stopped operating [his] other business interests” and is no longer involved with “hosting duties” for other websites. Otto was previously listed as the technical contact in the domain registration of breitbart.com, and was thanked by name in the foreword to Andrew Breitbart’s book about Hollywood.

“I knew Andrew Breitbart when he was alive, and helped him with some technical work,” Otto said.

Margaret Otto declined to discuss her company’s plans for Drudge Report or Refdesk, which she said is also represented by Granite. She wouldn’t say if she represents other websites or answer other questions, such as whether Matt or Bob Drudge were shareholders in Granite.

“We respect our customer’s privacy, and therefore, cannot comment on the other questions,” she said in an email.

Friedman said the connections between the Ottos and Drudges raise a question of whether the move to Granite Cubed is “a relationship play [or] a revenue maximization play,” given that today’s representation firms need to be “incredibly technically savvy and have a really good grasp on how to [succeed] in an automated ad market.”

Drudge was characteristically silent when emailed by BuzzFeed News for comment about his new advertising partner and the strategy for his site. His old partners were also hesitant to speak, reinforcing how one of the web’s most influential websites remains in many ways a one-man black box.

“Intermarkets no longer represents DrudgeReport.com, and it is our policy to not discuss former clients with the media,” said Kevin Lucido, the CEO of Intermarkets, which represents other conservative publishers, such as the Media Research Center and the Political Insider.

For his part, Bob Drudge said in an email, “I am retired and have no comment.”

It all makes for a startling shift for a publisher best known for a strategy rooted in changing nothing about his site’s operation. It’s also causing the ad industry to look closely at the mysterious new firm and its high-profile customer.

Friedman said Granite Cubed’s lack of a track record and profile in the industry will be a challenge if it tries to sell ad space directly to brands and agencies. “Certainly if you decide to go to big brands and sell directly, the Granite Cubed thing is going to be challenging. [Brands] get 100 requests a week for meetings and this probably isn’t going to float to the top,” even if they’re representing Drudge, he said.

Others in the industry say they had concerns about Drudge long before the switch to Granite. A manager at another ad tech company told BuzzFeed News he blocked the Drudge Report from its systems in 2017 due to “unacceptable auto-refreshing practices.”

After being loaded in a web browser, Drudge’s site automatically reloads itself after two minutes. The manager said the frequent refresh rate for Drudge Report raised concerns about the number of ads being loaded that were actually able to be viewed by users.

“The page was refreshing approximately every 120 seconds, with no consideration given to user activity. The user could have it open in a background tab and it would accrue [ad] impressions all day long,” said the manager, who requested anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the media about specific websites.

The manager said they also removed refdesk.com from the platform due to similar concerns.

Drudge, Granite, and Intermarkets declined to comment on the refresh rate or the comments from the ad tech company manager.

In an interview with Ad Age last year, Erik Requidan, an Intermarkets executive who helped oversee Drudge’s monetization efforts, spoke about how the site’s seemingly low-tech design belied a more “sophisticated” ad operation.

“What seems like a pretty simple thing on the surface is actually quite sophisticated and effective,” he said.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/cra...ad-revenue

I would guess that he made a silent sale/deal to someone in Silicon Valley, most likely connected to Google, and has allowed them to push for Trump's impeachment through editorilizing his headlines and sending people to the MSM.

Post: #22

^^^And we owe him nothing.

Post: #23

Things are heating up and people are looking to secure their position post-Trump.

Matt Drudge is in a fairly rare position where he can start sucking establishment dick and still retain enough viewership to be an asset to the deep state. They may betray him down the line anyway. Hardcore totalitarian regimes like the one America is heading toward generally tend to execute all former enemies the moment their sellout services are no longer required. But maybe Drudge is hoping for the best or foolishly thinking he can take all that money and find somewhere safe to be left alone.

Not gonna happen, but if he's convinced that the Deep State is going to take the whole pot then I suppose he figures it's better to get on his knees and have a change of survival than to keep speaking out and be guaranteed a long drop and a quick stop.

Post: #24

This just goes to show that no matter much these duplicitous aliens may appear to be on your side, they are not, and will never be patriots.

Post: #25

< Look how those free-market-libertarians defend him for selling to Google. Didn't he make 15 mio.$ + each year before even selling out? Sure - if he became truly dangerous then they could have cut it to 100k or banned the site, but still - it's more like the mindset of who cares.

True patriots like Red Ice had monetization for 2 months before getting banned all across ads and even payment processing venues.

But that is how you see the difference between those that are really unwelcome to the globalists and the monetary masters of the world and those that give you conspiratainment. Alex Jones only got banned after going into population replacement in the West - everything before that was fine - Illuminati Satanist 9/11 false flaggers - who cares, but don't give the goys any ideas.

He doesn't owe us anything. Sure - and the worst part is that it will work on half his audience anyway. They will still think that it's the same despite being Huffpo light.