Matt Drudge

Columnist

Matt Drudge's The Drudge Report is one of the best-known political news and gossip sites on the Internet. Drudge grew up near Washington, D. C., then headed west to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a journalist. After a series of frustrating low-paying jobs, he launched his own website in 1995, combining news links and headlines with celebrity gossip "scoops" he had overheard or found by digging through the trash. Drudge also added political gossip to the mix, and in 1998 broke the story of an affair between Monica Lewinsky and U.S. President Bill Clinton. The story made him a permanent fixture on the political gossip scene. Drudge's flair for the theatrical (he prefers to dress in the costume of an early 20th century muckraker) made him an instant hit on the same media outlets he regularly criticized, and soon he had his own commentary show on radio and TV. By 2000 he had been fired by both ABC radio and Fox television, but in 2001 he bounced back with a weekly radio show on WABC.

Other columnists and pundits: Pat Buchanan, Maureen Dowd, Paul Harvey and Bill O'Reilly.